{"id":134832,"date":"2021-03-18T13:50:10","date_gmt":"2021-03-18T12:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=134832"},"modified":"2021-03-18T13:52:04","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T12:52:04","slug":"covid-19-weekly-health-summary-18-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/covid-19-weekly-health-summary-18-march\/","title":{"rendered":"Covid-19: Weekly Health Summary \u2013 18 March"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Health Summary is part of our Weekly COVID-19 Bulletin, sent every Thursday. You can\u00a0sign up to receive your copy here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vaccine roll-out<\/strong>
\n<\/span>The Government has\u00a0<\/span>confirmed<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that more than 25 million people in the UK have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. This\u00a0includes\u00a0<\/span>95% of people aged 65 and over, and nine in 10 of those clinically extremely vulnerable. <\/span><\/p>\n

The announcement comes as a letter from NHS England has\u00a0said<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that health services should stop booking under-50s for their first-dose appointments for the\u00a0whole\u00a0of April. The letter explained that the move was necessary because of a \u2018significant reduction in weekly supply\u2019.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, speaking at the Downing Street Press Conference on Wednesday, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock <\/span>praised<\/span><\/a>\u00a0the vaccination roll-out and\u00a0confirmed that the Government is on track to offer the first dose of the vaccine to all over-50s by 15 April, as well as all adults by the end of July. <\/span><\/p>\n

He confirmed that from Wednesday all people over 50 are invited to come forward and get their first Covid-19 jab.\u00a0He also\u00a0highlighted\u00a0the\u00a0importance\u00a0of the vaccine\u00a0rollout and\u00a0showed\u00a0data\u00a0which demonstrates that after\u00a0a\u00a0first dose, protection against hospitalisation is around 80% and protection against death is around 85%.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Professor Martin Marshall, Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, has responded to the news of potential vaccine supply issues, he\u00a0<\/span>said<\/span><\/a>: \u2018This disruption to supply is disappointing and will understandably be frustrating for patients, as it will be to GP teams running vaccination sites who want to protect as many people as quickly as possible \u2013 but we continue to receive assurances that this delay is temporary, and the vaccination programme remains on target.\u2019<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Digitalisation of the health services\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/span>The Health Foundation\u00a0<\/span>published<\/span><\/a>\u00a0research this week on the positives of the use of healthcare technology during the pandemic. It found that around three fifths of NHS users increased their use of technology to access care during the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic and an overwhelming majority of these (83%) viewed their experience positively. However, when compared to traditional models of care, NHS users are not so favourable to the use of technology in health services. Notably, NHS users 55 and older reported slightly higher proportions of negative experiences with the digitalisation of the health services.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0Health\u00a0<\/span>Foundation recommends that there should be more research on the use of the technology in the NHS to ensure quality in long-term digitalisation of services, and so that changes are user centred. They also call for a refresh of the NHS Long Term Plan to optimise the use of recent technological innovations to meet longer term quality and productivity goals.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Today the Health Secretary\u00a0<\/span>confirmed<\/span><\/a>\u00a0more NHS hospital trusts would benefit from the Digital Aspirants programme.\u00a032 more trusts will now join those already participating in the programme. Seven will get up to \u00a36m each over the next three years. The rest will get \u00a3250k seed funding to help them develop business cases for further digital investment.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Impact of Covid-19 on health services<\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/span>A report\u00a0<\/span>published<\/span><\/a>\u00a0by the Institute for Public Policy Research this week claims that the ambitions of the NHS Long Term Plan risk being severely disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic without a significant funding boost. It has suggested a \u00a312bn blueprint to \u2018build back better\u2019, and made recommendations including creating a sustainable workforce, greater funding for the NHS, upgrading digital care and reforming social care making it free at the point of use.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Marking a year since the first Covid-19 lockdown\u00a0was\u00a0announced<\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/strong>The Office for National Statistics (ONS)\u00a0<\/span>published<\/span><\/a>\u00a0a report on the impact of the pandemic a year on from when the first lockdown was announced. Since March 2020 more than 140,000 people have now died with Covid-19 in the UK. The number of adults in critical care in hospitals was far higher than previous winters. In the last week of January 2021, more than 5,000 adult critical care beds a day were occupied in hospitals in England, compared with around 3,000 a day in the same week in 2020. <\/span><\/p>\n

The report also highlighted the wider impacts of the pandemic, including on the labour market, unemployment, the economy, and crime. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

NHS Providers\u00a0<\/span>said<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that the report lays bare the terrible toll of Covid-19 and the \u2018immense pressure\u2019 on the NHS over the past year.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s Covid Health Summary covers the vaccine roll out, digitalisation of the health services, the impact of Covid-19 on health services and a year since the first lockdown. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"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\/134832"}],"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\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134832"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134834,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134832\/revisions\/134834"}],"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=134832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}