Coventry & Warwickshire COVID-19 Portal

**Please find below the latest primary care coronavirus briefing.**

Information provided by NHS Coventry and Rugby CCG, NHS South Warwickshire CCG and NHS Warwickshire North CCG in line with Public Health England guidance.

This information may change rapidly as the situation develops. For the latest local information for primary care, visit our dedicated Coventry and Warwickshire COVID-19 support portal: https://www.cwcovid.support/  

You can also find the latest national information on the NHS England Primary Care site: https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/primary-care

In today's briefing we include the latest news stories falling into the following categories:

• Latest Local Picture

• Local Updates

• Latest National Picture

• Education

• Communications from NHS England

• Actions For Primary Care

Please click on the relevant section to view specific information

Please remember: we are issuing the briefing twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday) communications via: warnoccg.covid19primarycarecommunications@nhs.net. We would also ask that if you have questions or concerns relating to the current situation around coronavirus and COVID-19 you use the same address: warnoccg.covid19primarycarecommunications@nhs.net. Please keep us updated with any issues that you may be having so we can try to address them.

Coventry and Warwickshire COVID position up to 25.06.2020

2,431 cases now confirmed in Coventry and Warwickshire (+16 / +0.7% from Monday)

46 of these are currently admitted (-19 / -29.2% from Monday)

Admissions by Trust:

GEH: 40

UHCW: 6

SWFT: 0

CWPT: 0

533 beds still available (-50 / -8.6% from Monday)

3 ITU beds occupied by Covid patients (+0 / +0.0% from Monday)

506 reported deaths in a hospital setting (+5 / +1.0% from Monday)

CareHome current position as at 24.06.2020 as reported in yesterday’s Silver call update

252 Covid related deaths in care homes (+0 / +0.0% from Monday, note some of these deaths may have occurred outside of the home and so may be counted in the figure above)

611 Care home deaths in total (+0 / +0.0% from Monday)

781 confirmed cases (+0 / +0.0% from Monday)

Confirmed care home cases broken down by CCG:

Coventry & Rugby: 420

South Warwickshire: 241

Warwickshire North: 120

Download the weekly data pack.

1. Restoration of Services

As you will all be aware, in March we paused a large number of non-essential services to enable practices to focus all their time and capacity on their COVID response. The Coventry and Warwickshire Primary Care Clinical Advisory Group are now working through the plan to restore and restart these services. This will include the prioritisation and timescales for the service restarts and the associated delivery requirements in relation to maintaining safe delivery of care. Further information on this, including the service restart timescales, will be shared next week.   

2. Increased risk of heat stress when wearing PPE

A warning has been issued on the increased risk of heat stress when wearing PPE in clinical settings. To reduce this risk, measures to control the temperature of clinical environments and enable staff to make behavioural adaptations to stay cool and well hydrated should be made.

 

Action which can be taken relating to this include;

Assess the risk of overheating in your workplace and consider appropriate control measures to implement.

Consider collective control measures first (eg remove or reduce the sources of heat where possible).

Consult the Heatwave Plan for England.

Sign up to receive PHE/Met Office heat-health alerts

Ensure that staff are aware of the risk of heat stress when wearing PPE and know how to reduce their risk including making sure that frontline staff receive any alerts.

Staff working in warm/hot conditions should follow the advice:

Take regular breaks, find somewhere cool if you can.

Make sure you are hydrated).

Be aware of the signs and symptoms of heat stress and dehydration

Use a buddy system with your team to look out for the signs of heat stress

Between shifts, try to stay cool as this will give your body a chance to recover.

3. Your chance to feed back on the mental health GP Advice Line

We have been exploring how we can improve and expand utilisation of the mental health GP Advice Line. The next step in this work is to gain GP feedback on the current service with the intention that we would then be in a position to potentially trial Consultant Connect and subsequently run an evaluation. Following a delay due to COVID-19, this work is back underway and we are asking you to take part in a survey which should take less than five minutes to complete: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/T2RG2YD  

UPDATES FOR Coventry and Rugby – 25 June 2020

No updates this issue.

UPDATES FOR South Warwickshire – 25 June 2020

Funnel Charts

Download the latest funnel charts from SWFT for south Warwickshire practices. The are on Non-Elective Admissions - COPD and Diabetes; Points of Delivery and Top 5 Speciality Treatments.

UPDATES FOR Warwickshire North – 25 June 2020

No update this issue.

Please note all sessions are open to all localities

4. Managing the Breathless and Haematology Patients during COVID

Date: Tuesday 30th June 2020

Time: 1.00 -2.00pm

Location: Microsoft Teams- joining details below:

Join Microsoft Teams Meeting

 

The session is open to all Clinicians as well as Practice Managers and any other staff, the agenda is attached.

The programme is still being developed and we will advise you of future plans as soon as they are confirmed. The next session being planned is for Tuesday 7th July 2020 , 1:00 – 2:00– TBA     

 

If you are unable to join the session at the scheduled time, it will be recorded and available to view on the Care for Your Career website- https://careforyourcareer.co.uk/support/ We are also planning on posting future programming on this website for reference purposes. Previous Warwickshire North education sessions have also been uploaded onto the website - https://careforyourcareer.co.uk/support/medical-education/​ 

 

5. Microsoft Team training

This training on Microsoft Team is provided by the ICT Team at SWFT. Session 1- Introduction and Session 2- Meetings. Dates include 26 June and 30 June. For further information please contact Emma.Fulham@swft.nhs.uk. The schedule, joining instructions and course content are both available.

6. Lunchtime webinar: Treatment and support for non-dependent and dependent drinkers in Coventry on 3 July 2020 from 1pm to 1.30pm

The session will aid front line staff supporting adults in Coventry. It will be in the form of a 30 minute lunchtime webinar briefing to outline treatment options and harm reduction advice covering the spectrum of alcohol misuse. The webinar will be presented by Karen Wagstaff from HLS Coventry and Steve Bliss from CGL Coventry and will be followed by a Q&A session. The briefing will include an overview of the spectrum of alcohol use and assessing the level of alcohol use. Access is via Microsoft Teams.

7. Medical education sessions for all

Medical education sessions available to all to watch, including a session on IT and AccuRx on 3 June on www.mededcoventry.com. Go to the GP section and then to Presentations, (log in using covgp for both GMC and password). The AccuRx information on 3 June starts about 30 mins in. Any queries, please contact gpteachingadmin@uhcw.nhs.uk.

PRACTICE NURSE EDUCATION

8. FREE Perinatal Mental Health Training for Practice Nurses via Zoom

FREE Perinatal Mental Health Training for Practice Nurses via Zoom by Dr Lucy Blunt, GP Champion for Perinatal MH for Coventry and Warwickshire

An essential training course written specifically for practice nurses on how to recognise perinatal mental illness in primary care. Date: Tuesday 30 June 2020

19:30 – 20:30

 

Currently in the UK around 20% of new mums are affected by mental health issues but only 50% of these are being detected. Why is this? What can we do about it? Untreated perinatal mental illness has huge implications for both the family and society as a whole. Raising awareness of perinatal illness isn't just about diagnosing postnatal depression. It's about recognising all other forms of mental illness that can occur in new parents and thier families. Practice nurses play a vital role in helping to recognise and support these families in primary care. Please join me for this interactive Zoom session to raise awareness and provide education for those nurses working in primary care.

 

Registration is via Eventbrite. Once your ticket has been registered you will be sent the Zoom details to enable login on the night.

Dowloading the Zoom app can take some time so please consider downloading this before the event.

As of 9am on 24 June, there have been 8,542,186 tests, with 232,086 tests on 23 June.

306,862 people have tested positive.

As of 5pm on 23 June, of those who tested positive for coronavirus in the UK, across all settings, 43,081 have died.

Latest advice is here

Slides and datasets: 24 June 2020

Coronavirus (COVID-19): guidance for local government

Latest local figures published by GOV.uk and PHE are as of Wednesday 24 June 2020 at 4:20pm, there are a total of 16,962 cases in the West Midlands.

9. COVID-19: Easing of lockdown restrictions 

On Tuesday 23 June the Prime Minister Boris Johnson set out further changes to lockdown measures in England to enable people to see more of their friends and family, help businesses get back on their feet and get people back in their jobs.

 

From Saturday 4th July, the Prime Minister has announced that:

Pubs, restaurants and hairdressers will be able to reopen, providing they adhere to COVID Secure guidelines - updated guidance for all workplace settings can be found here: https://bit.ly/sectorsocialdist

Two households will be able to meet up in any setting with social distancing measures - updated guidance on social distancing can be found here: https://bit.ly/SDUpdated

People can now enjoy staycations in England with the reopening of accommodation sites - guidance on opening up the visitor economy can also be found here: https://bit.ly/sectorsocialdist

In order to begin restoring the arts and cultural sector, some leisure facilities and tourist attractions may also reopen, if they can do so safely – this includes outdoor gyms and playgrounds, cinemas, museums, galleries, theme parks and arcades, as well as libraries, social clubs, places of worship and community centres - guidance on opening up the visitor economy can also be found here: https://bit.ly/sectorsocialdist

 Following a review, the Prime Minister has also set out that where it is not possible to stay two metres apart, guidance will allow people to keep a social distance of ‘one metre plus’. This means staying one metre apart, plus mitigations which reduce the risk of transmission. The full press release here: https://bit.ly/PMPressNotice

 

10. COVID-19 General Practice Webinar Recordings and slides

An archive of the national primary care webinars and slides are available online from the NHS Future NHS site: https://future.nhs.uk/P_C_N/view?objectID=19549104 (a login is required).

11. Media enquiries

Our communications team is here to support you if needed. If you are approached by the media, please forward on to your local communications team: agem.communications@nhs.net. Outside of working hours the communications team can be reached via 01522 537887.   

 

12. Please ensure you are acting on the heat stress advice.