COVID-19: 15th June COVID-19 round-up for primary care
You will have seen the announcement that Step 4 of the Government’s Roadmap has been paused. This comes alongside an acceleration of the vaccine programme to ensure that by 19 July, all adults will have been offered a first dose and around two thirds of all adults will have been offered two doses. Ongoing support of up to £20m of additional staff resources is available to all PCN and community pharmacy local vaccination services, in recognition of your huge ongoing role in the programme for which we are grateful.
As we approached the original date for Step 4, we were asked regularly for how long we intend to keep standard operating procedures in place. This week’s announcement demonstrates that to reflect a changing situation. We need to continue to keep reviewing the need for SOPs as well as their content. Whilst current SOPs remain as guidance, we want to reassure you all that the SOP approach is still a temporary one - useful during the pandemic to help adapt service delivery, not a permanent fixture. We anticipate that Step 4 of the Roadmap may be the right time to review what, if any, elements of an SOP may need to remain and how we then best signpost people to relevant guidance. This may well differ depending on the extent of ongoing disruption to the usual business model for each professional group.
At the NHS Confederation conference today, Sir Simon Stevens announced that the NHS is setting up specialist long COVID services for children and young people as part of a £100 million expansion of care for those suffering from long COVID (post COVID syndrome). Up to £30 million will also be made available to GPs to support around long COVID through a new enhanced service. Further details of this enhanced service will be made available shortly.
Acceleration of second doses for cohort 10 (40 to 49 year olds) and further opening of cohort 12 to 23 and 24 year olds
In response to advice from the independent JCVI, the Government has set out that appointments for a second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine will be brought forward from 12 to 8 weeks for the remaining people in cohort 10 (people in their 40s) who have yet to receive their second dose. This is to ensure priority groups have the strongest possible protection from the Delta variant of the virus at the earliest opportunity possible.
This announcement builds on the previous advice that second doses for cohorts 1-9 should be brought forward from 12 weeks to 8 weeks. All providers are asked to continue to vaccinate priority groups as soon as possible and not to hold on to vaccine supply. Second dose vaccinations should not be offered earlier than 8 weeks except in accordance with the guidance by JCVI and the Green Book.
From today, we are sending text messages to people aged 23 and 24 inviting them to book their vaccination appointments through the National Booking Service (on the NHS website or by calling 119). We expect to then invite the remainder of cohort 12 to book their appointments later this week and will send further communications on timings as soon as possible.
Read our letter which provides more detail and actions for all vaccination sites to take.
COVID-19: 17th June COVID-19 round-up for primary care
Today’s GP appointment data for April 2021 shows that there were 31.5m appointments including COVID-19 vaccines given in practices/PCNs in April, an increase of 28% on April 2019. Excluding covid vaccinations shows that appointment numbers for other reasons are 2.4% lower than in April 2019. Thank you for all you are doing to both offer routine care and maintain your incredible input to the vaccination programme.
Next week we welcome wave 20 of the local vaccination sites joining the vaccination programme, taking us to over 600 community pharmacy vaccination locations. This is a fantastic team effort across primary care as we continue to work together to support our communities to protect themselves against coronavirus.
This was further reflected in NHS England Chief Operating Officer Amanda Pritchard’s speech at the NHS Confederation conference where she spotlighted the great work already happening across general practice, community pharmacy and dentistry to make every contact count with patients, using every opportunity to keep people well rather than just seeking to make them better. Amanda’s speech highlighted the other pilots we are exploring to expand this work, for example at autumn/winter flu clinics.
To further support general practice, we are pleased to confirm we will be extending the funding for PCN Clinical Director support for those participating in phase two of the vaccine programme from July to September 2021. Details of this arrangement are outlined in an update letter on contract arrangements for 2021/22 which also offers practices the voluntary opportunity to participate in two new enhanced services from 1 July 2021, backed by up to £50m of additional funding. The enhanced services focus on two areas which are a priority to support recovery from the pandemic: long Covid and weight management.
Design Framework published to help ICSs progression
NHS England and NHS Improvement has set out the next steps for development of integrated care systems with legislation expected to begin passage through Parliament before the summer. The Integrated Care Systems Design Framework has been published to support the ongoing progression and development of ICSs. All subject to legislation, it will help ICSs as they put in place the practical steps to prepare for their new functions that we expect to be enabled by legislation in this Parliamentary session.
It's the first in a suite of guidance and resources to help systems over the coming months and is important that all areas of primary care engage with the proposed legislation. Read the document in full online.
Long term effects of COVID-19 and Post-COVID-19 syndrome
Since the beginning of the pandemic many patients have been complaining of symptoms persisting more than four weeks after initially falling ill with symptoms of COVID-19.
This eLearning module will introduce the key recommendations from the NICE/SIGN/RCGP guidance, post-COVID-19’s impact on patients and how to manage their symptoms and expectations in primary care. See also the new optional enhanced service for long COVID which provides up to £30 million to general practices to support professional education, training and pathway development that will enable management in primary care where appropriate and more consistent referrals to clinics for specialist assessment.
