{"id":134484,"date":"2021-02-18T15:16:03","date_gmt":"2021-02-18T14:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=134484"},"modified":"2021-02-18T15:16:03","modified_gmt":"2021-02-18T14:16:03","slug":"covid-19-weekly-health-summary-18-february","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/covid-19-weekly-health-summary-18-february\/","title":{"rendered":"Covid-19: Weekly Health Summary \u2013 18 February"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Health Summary is part of our Weekly COVID-19 Bulletin, sent every Thursday. You can sign up to receive your copy here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last weekend, the Government\u00a0hit its target<\/a>\u00a0of offering the Covid-19 vaccine to the top four priority groups: all elderly care home residents and their carers; everyone over 70; all frontline health and social care workers; and everyone with a condition that makes them extremely vulnerable to the virus.\u00a0Prime Minister Boris Johnson\u00a0has called<\/a>\u00a0the news an \u2018unprecedented national achievement,\u2019\u00a0highlighting that 90% of over 70s took up their offer for a vaccine.<\/p>\n

Reaching the target has meant that the vaccines delivery programme entered a new phase this week, with the roll out\u00a0extended<\/a>\u00a0to people aged 65 to 69 and those who are clinically vulnerable against Covid-19.<\/p>\n

NHS\u00a0England and Improvement has\u00a0indicated\u00a0that\u00a0GP\u00a0led vaccination sites will focus initially on the clinically vulnerable to ensure continuity of care.\u00a0NHS Confederation\u2019s\u00a0Primary Care Network Director Ruth Rankine has welcomed this approach, she\u00a0said<\/a>: \u2018Working as part of an integrated system, primary care is best placed to offer vaccinations to clinically extremely vulnerable people. Primary care services are at the heart of communities and have already found ways to improve access through targeted public information and local engagement.\u2019<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, the Government published a\u00a0Vaccination Uptake Plan<\/a>\u00a0to further enforce the roll of community- led engagement in vaccine distribution. The plan aims to make the vaccine more accessible including to ethnic minorities and those with disabilities. It has been welcomed<\/a>\u00a0by NHS Providers, which has noticed that vaccine\u00a0uptake\u00a0is lower in certain groups, including a reluctance among\u00a0BAME\u00a0NHS staff. Chief executive Chris Hopson said that NHS Trust leaders will welcome strengthened collaboration between the Government,\u00a0charities\u00a0and health organisations\u00a0to\u00a0build upon\u00a0\u2018successful local initiatives and innovations, so that disparities can be eliminated.\u2019<\/p>\n

A further 1.7m people are expected to be added to the\u00a0shielding list<\/a>\u00a0and will prioritised for the Covid-19 vaccine. It follows a new model that was developed to\u00a0consider\u00a0extra factors including, ethnicity,\u00a0deprivation\u00a0and weight. Runnymede Trust called<\/a>\u00a0the news a \u2018watershed movement,\u00a0signally\u00a0a recognition that class and race impacts your vulnerability to Covid-19\u2019.<\/p>\n

According to<\/a>\u00a0latest figures from the REACT-1 community surveillance study, Covid-19 infections have fallen by more than two-thirds since the start of February. Although infection levels remain high, these latest findings indicate that lockdown restrictions have had an impact on reducing infections across the country. Health Secretary Matt Hancock\u00a0said<\/a>: \u2018These findings show encouraging signs infections are now heading in the right direction across the country, but we must not drop our guard. Cases and hospital admissions remain high \u2013 over 20,000 COVID-19 patients are in hospital \u2013 so it is vital we all remain vigilant and follow the rules as our vaccination rollout continues at pace.\u2019<\/p>\n

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee held an\u00a0evidence session<\/a>\u00a0on easing lockdown measures in England\u00a0on Wednesday. Here, it was suggested by Mark Woolhouse, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, that the country could potentially begin to ease out of lockdown earlier than it did the\u00a0first-time\u00a0round\u00a0because of promising data on Covid-19 transmission.<\/p>\n

He also praised the high take up of\u00a0vaccinations,\u00a0highlighting\u00a0that the vaccine\u00a0roll out\u00a0has reduced\u00a0transmission.\u00a0On the other hand, the Government\u2019s deputy chief scientific adviser, Professor Angela McLean, struck a more cautious argument and said that is vital that lockdown measures are reduced in line with the rollout of vaccines.<\/p>\n

NHS Providers said<\/a>\u00a0four tests must be met before lockdown restrictions can be reduced. Firstly, Covid-19 infections should be around 1,000 a day; NHS capacity must be high enough to treat all patients; the vaccination campaign should be sufficiently advanced and, finally, an effective strategy should be in place to rapidly\u00a0identify\u00a0and control future outbreaks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s Covid Health Summary covers more detail on the next phase of the vaccine roll out, details on those that are required to shield, the easing of lockdown measures and the tests that must be met in order to do so. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":440,"featured_media":134254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7383,7271,7341],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134484"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/440"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134484"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134486,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134484\/revisions\/134486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}