(17 Mar 2023)
On Friday night the Department of Health and Social Care said the British Medical Association had agreed to enter negotiations on the same terms as unions representing nurses, ambulance staff and other NHS workers in talks that concluded this week.
(16 Mar 2023)
After three months of strikes, the Government has offered a one off bonus this year of 2.5% for the best paid and 8.2% for the worst paid.
The offer, recommended by most of the main NHS unions, comes on top of the 4% increase already implemented for 2022/23.
This award had come with inflation at over 10% and had sparked the strikes.
Nottingham NHS staff taking part in the biggest strike in the history of the service say they are suffering a ‘huge’ impact on their mental health because of their jobs.
Hundreds of nurses, healthcare assistants and clinicians took to picket lines across Nottinghamshire alongside paramedics, technicians, call handlers and other staff working for East Midlands Ambulance Service.
Here are the main public service strikes planned for the coming months, and the dates that these unions will be staging industrial action across Edinburgh.
Nurses and ambulance workers have been striking separately since late last year but Monday‘s walkout involving both, largely in England, is the biggest in the 75-year history of the NHS.
Nurses will also walk out on Tuesday, ambulance staff on Friday, and physiotherapists Thursday, making the week probably the most disruptive in NHS history, its Medical Director Stephen Powis said.
Rachel Harrison, GMB National Secretary, said:
“GMB’s ambulance workers are angry. In their own words ‘they are done’.
„Our message to the Government is clear – talk pay now.
“Ministers have made things worse by demonising the ambulance workers who provided life and limb cover on strike days – playing political games with their scaremongering.
“The only way to solve this dispute is a proper pay offer.
Jade McCauley was due to start a completely new job tomorrow which would have bumped her yearly salary up by £8,000.
However, the community nurse at Northern General Hospital in Sheffield had a change of due to her passion for helping patients.
The 34-year-old spoke to the Mirror on the picket line outside the hospital today.
She also raised concerns about patient safety and called on Rishi Sunak to „spend a day in our shoes“.
A meeting held this morning with Health Secretary Stephen Barclay was described as „constructive“ by one doctors‘ union leader. But Professor Philip Banfield, chair of council at the British Medical Association (BMA), said there was no mention of one-off payments for NHS staff.
„People can‘t get appointments anymore so they put off going to the doctor and when it gets worse they come to us,“ he says.
He and colleagues are also struggling with the cost of living, Mr Mistry say.
„I‘m now having to think about how much heating I have on in the house – I have it on for two hours a day now.“
Mandatory Covid jabs for NHS and social care workers are set to be scrapped, The Telegraph can reveal, after warnings of crippling staff shortages if the plan went ahead.
Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, will on Monday meet fellow ministers on the Covid-Operations Cabinet committee to rubber stamp the decision on the about-turn.
Nearly 90 per cent of Scottish adults are estimated to have antibodies which protect against Covid-19, either through vaccination or previous infection, according to the Office for National Statistics.
(today)
Scientists say they are “puzzled” by the recent drop, blaming it on the heatwave, school closures, the Euros tournament ending, or a decrease in testing. It may even be the result of the “pingdemic” causing mass isolation and lowering transmission, they say, or else people are no longer being tested for fear of missing holidays.
Few straws have been left unclutched in the bid to explain the anomaly. Yet amid the bewilderment, few seem willing to consider the prospect that it is the vaccination programme which is doing most of the heavy lifting. Britain may be finally nearing the Holy Grail of herd immunity.
Scientists at University College London estimate the total population‘s immunity is at 87 per cent, with the current threshold for herd immunity at 93 per cent due to the contagious delta variant.
Being so close to the threshold should make it harder for the virus to transmit.
Dr David Matthews, a virologist and coronaviruses expert from the University of Bristol, told The Telegraph: ‚In terms of herd immunity – by which we mean the virus has managed to reach everybody and therefore most people will have a level of immune memory – I suspect we‘re very close to it.
Sebastian James is one of the most prominent business leaders so far to speak out in support of the Daily Mail campaign to stop vital workers being compelled to isolate unnecessarily.
In an interview with the Mail, he revealed that staff absence rates have increased by 50 per cent throughout his chain‘s 2,330 stores, which offer important pharmacy services to the public.
The Government and its scientific advisers had been expecting cases to rocket to at least 100,000 every day this autumn, with top SAGE member ‚Professor Lockdown‘ Neil Ferguson claiming they could even top 200,000.
But daily infections now appear to be falling or levelling off in every region of England. The North East, a hotspot for the Indian ‚Delta‘ variant, was the first to see its outbreak peak on July 14, according to the data.
Experts said it meant the national statistics, published daily on the government website and frequently referred to by ministers, may far overstate the levels of pressures on the NHS.
The leaked data – covering all NHS trusts in England – show that, as of last Thursday, just 44 per cent of patients classed as being hospitalised with Covid had tested positive by the time they were admitted.
But the Public Health England research he cited was six months old and carried out before the vast majority of the public had been vaccinated against Covid.
It also involved only those who had been alerted by NHS Test and Trace as close contacts of positive cases.
The Prime Minister implied it covered the NHS Covid app, which had not been rolled out at the time. The app tends to be less reliable at identifying close contacts than Test and Trace and can ‚ping‘ people through walls.
(23.07.2021)
Coronavirus latest: THE ARMY is on standby to step in and help secure the nation‘s food supplies if the Pingdemic worsens, a Cabinet minister said today.
According to the health department, the number of people using the NHS Test and Trace app to register at pubs, shops and other venues fell 10 per cent compared with the previous week — which has been seen as another sign of deletions.
(20.07.2021)
Forty per cent of respondents say they never had the app in the first place
Schätzungen zufolge befinden sich derzeit rund 1,7 Millionen Briten in Selbstisolation, da sie entweder an Covid-19 erkrankt sind oder als enge Kontakte von Infizierten „gepingt“ – also von der englischen Corona-App oder vom Gesundheitsdienst – benachrichtigt wurden.
– Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng admits he can‘t guarantee ‚pingdemic‘ won‘t continue beyond August 16
– Iceland said it closed ‚a number of stores‘ due to staff having to self-isolate after being notified by NHS app
– The frozen food chain revealed 1,000 employees – four per cent of its workforce – have had to stay at home
– It said that in the next few days it will start to draft in another 2,000 people to fill temporary roles in stores
– Meanwhile BP said it has had to temporarily close some of its stations due to petrol and diesel supply issues
– The oil company said the problems were being caused by a shortage of lorry drivers that had been ‚pinged‘
This is a 16.7 per cent increase on seven days before, when 530,126 ‚pings‘ were sent out.
And it is likely that the actual number is much higher, once people who have been contacted by Test and Trace are factored in.
The nation is currently in the grips of a so-called ‚pingdemic‘, with fears the economy could grind to a halt if the problem persists.
– SAGE has told PM he may need to roll back some curbs by end of first week of August if admissions don‘t slow
– Would mark another extraordinary U-turn just three weeks after Freedom Day was given go-ahead on July 19
The NHS COVID-19 Data Store sits on a Microsoft Azure platform under contract with NHS England and NHS Improvement. Within that secure cloud processing environment, Palantir (acting under instruction from NHS England) manage their platform which is called Foundry.
Palantir, have built analytical dashboards for access by NHS England and Improvement staff, together with staff in the following organisations working under contract: Faculty AI, McKinsey and Deloittes.
(10.05.2020)
Palantir was co-founded in 2004 by Paypal owner and billionaire Peter Thiel. What the blog doesn’t reveal is that Palantir’s client list has included amomgst others, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the Centre for Disease Control, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, Special Operations Command, West Point and the IRS.
Furthermore, in 2016, it was revealed Palantir had a $34.6m contract with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and helped the Customs and Border Protection Agency create the Analytical Framework for Intelligence (AFI) system to track immigrants.
Nor does the blog mention that Palantir worked for UK intelligence and was awarded contracts to handle vast data sets on UK citizens for British spy agency GCHQ.
(yesterday)
– Sir Patrick Vallance corrected a mistake about Covid hospitalisation rates
– He originally said 60 per cent of people going to hospital were doubled jabbed
– But he later tweeted the figure applied to the unvaccinated people
(16.07.2021)
A total of 520,194 self-isolation alerts were sent in the most recent week, the highest number since the phone app’s launch.
Four out of 10 patients hospitalised with the Indian Covid variant in England may have been admitted for something else, MailOnline analysis of official data suggests.
Public Health England‘s fortnightly report on the ‚Delta‘ strain showed a total of 1,904 people had spent at least one night in hospital with the mutant virus by June 21.
But the agency admits 739 (39 per cent) of these patients may have gone to hospital for a different condition or injury and tested positive through routine NHS testing.
Britain‘s daily Covid deaths fell again today despite cases jumping by nearly 62 per cent in a week, as Tory MPs, businesses and teachers called on the Prime Minister to ‚go quicker‘ and axe crippling self-isolation rules.
Department of Health bosses posted just 14 deaths, falling 26.3 per cent on last Wednesday‘s figure of 19, in a clear sign of the vaccine effect in the face of climbing cases.
The vaccine rollout is expected to drop to 150,000 first doses a day in the next few months because of shortages in the supply of Pfizer and Moderna‘s jabs and because the AstraZeneca vaccine is not being given to young people.
An Office for National Statistics (ONS) report published today found that 74 people died directly from Covid in the week ending June 18, which was up 12 per cent on the week before. Wales recorded no deaths from the virus in the most recent week, for the first time since the pandemic began.
A separate study from scientists at Cambridge University found that fewer than one in a thousand people who catch Covid in England now die from the disease. They estimate the overall infection fatality rate (IFR) of coronavirus has been driven down to 0.085 per cent thanks to the country‘s hugely successful vaccine rollout.
The pandemic has led to a widespread suspension of normal NHS diagnostic tests and surgery as hospitals prioritised saving Covid victims.
This has left the service in England with a record 4.59 million people waiting for hospital treatment.
Sir David told the Guardian: „The backlog is truly frightening. We can very easily get to the next election with people waiting over two years.
Models predicted it would lead to nearly 60,000 Covid patients in hospital by June, compared to last month‘s high of 39,000.
Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance spoke of his support for the gradual approach taken by PM Boris Johnson, saying: „The sooner you open up everything, the higher the risk of a bigger resurgence.
„The slower you do it, the better.“
– Department of Health figures show infections are 9 per cent up on last Monday, when 9,765 were declared
– But laboratory-confirmed coronavirus fatalities have dropped by almost a quarter, from 230 last Monday
– Britain dished out 150,000 vaccines yesterday, in worst daily toll since roll-out began to speed up last month
The current COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, represents a major threat to health. The COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium has been created to deliver large-scale and rapid whole-genome virus sequencing to local NHS centres and the UK government.
COG-UK is made up of an innovative partnership of NHS organisations, the four Public Health Agencies of the UK, the Wellcome Sanger Institute and over twelve academic partners providing sequencing and analysis capacity.
(26 September 2020)
Genome UK sets out how the genomics community will work together to harness the latest advances in genetic and genomic science, research, and technology for the benefit of patients.
Our vision is to create the most advanced genomic healthcare ecosystem in the world, where government, the NHS, research and technology communities work together to embed the latest advances in patient care.
Our goal is that patients in the UK will benefit from world-first advances in genomic healthcare through globally leading collaborations between the government, NHS and researchers, building on already successful programmes such as the 100,000 Genomes Project, delivered by NHS England and Genomics England, and UK Biobank.
(17.01.2021)
I have been criticised by a family doctor on the grounds that a question I put to the PM in Parliament was ‘demoralising for NHS staff’.
I am at a loss as to how this could be the case.
The question to the PM was this:
“Pubs cannot compete with supermarkets for off-sales. Even within a household, people cannot play tennis or golf. Notwithstanding the assault on liberty and livelihoods, why are the regulations pervaded by a pettifogging malice?”
A senior Conservative MP urged anti-vaccination campaigners to keep going with their fight against government restrictions and told them NHS capacity figures were being „manipulated“ to exaggerate the scale of coronavirus, Sky News can reveal.
Another burning question which will determine how gung-ho ministers can be with easing restriction is to what extent the vaccines stop people from spreading Covid.
The Government has commissioned a study to investigate the vaccines and their role on transmission, which is being overseen by Public Health England. It is focused on frontline healthcare workers who‘ve been jabbed.
(08.01.2021)
The MPs also express concern about the government presenting statistics in a misleading way, and urge ministers to take care to maintain public confidence in them.
„There is nothing to fear from openness,“ said Tory MP Greg Clark, who chairs the committee.
(27.12.2020)
Just 388 people aged under 60 with no underlying health conditions have died of Covid-19 in England‘s hospitals since the start of the pandemic, NHS data has showed.
The figures show that 1,979 previously healthy people died in hospitals in England after testing positive for Covid-19 between April 2 and December 23.
(…)
(03 September 2020)
At the moment it seems that a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) positive result is the only criterion required for a case to be recognised.
“In any other disease we would have a clearly defined specification that would usually involve signs, symptoms, and a test result,” says Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford and the editor of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine. “We are moving into a biotech world where the norms of clinical reasoning are going out of the window. A PCR test does not equal covid-19; it should not, but in some definitions it does.”
Trademark symptoms of seasonal flu could be mistaken for symptoms of Covid-19 if the individual tests positive for the virus, it is claimed.
More than eight in ten people who test positive for coronavirus show none of the main symptoms at the time they are tested, a major study by UCL previously revealed.
However, those who test positive when they have cold symptoms may mistake them as being a part of the virus – adding to fears that it is taking a new guise as fresh strains emerge.
Sir John Bell, regius chair of medicine at the University of Oxford, said stubborn NHS bureaucrats were standing in the way of a high-speed mass inoculation programme that could prevent many further deaths.
“The NHS has the theoretical capacity to immunise everybody in five days if they want to, but I don’t get the sense they are really motivated,” Bell told the Times.
Prof Whitty commended the public for their efforts to stop the spread of Covid-19 and noted the hope offered by various vaccines, but he echoed other experts in saying it would be some weeks before the jabs start to reduce the number of people taken to hospital.
(09.01.2021)
(2) Clearly what is happening is a reclassification of deaths. Non-Covid deaths are being reclassified as ´Covid deaths’ by means of ramped up PCR testing. Which begs the question: why are they doing this, if not to justify lockdowns and other restrictions?
(10.05.2020)
Palantir was co-founded in 2004 by Paypal owner and billionaire Peter Thiel. What the blog doesn’t reveal is that Palantir’s client list has included amomgst others, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the Centre for Disease Control, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, Special Operations Command, West Point and the IRS.
Furthermore, in 2016, it was revealed Palantir had a $34.6m contract with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and helped the Customs and Border Protection Agency create the Analytical Framework for Intelligence (AFI) system to track immigrants.
Nor does the blog mention that Palantir worked for UK intelligence and was awarded contracts to handle vast data sets on UK citizens for British spy agency GCHQ.
(05.06.2020)
UK government has published the contracts it holds with private tech firms and the NHS for the creation of a COVID-19 data store, just days after campaigners fired legal shots over a lack of transparency.
Available on the openDemocracy website, the contracts describe how the arrangements between the NHS and Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and AI firms Faculty and Palantir (which subcontracts to AWS) will operate.
As Palantir‘s executives were preparing over the summer to release shares publicly for the first time, they faced a challenge: how do you convince investors to buy into a 17-year-old company that has never turned a profit?
(03 September 2020)
At the moment it seems that a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) positive result is the only criterion required for a case to be recognised.
“In any other disease we would have a clearly defined specification that would usually involve signs, symptoms, and a test result,” says Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford and the editor of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine. “We are moving into a biotech world where the norms of clinical reasoning are going out of the window. A PCR test does not equal covid-19; it should not, but in some definitions it does.”
(30.05.2020)
Normally, two doctors are needed to certify a death, one of whom has been treating the patient or who knows them and has seen them recently. That has changed. For Covid-19 only, the certification can be made by a single doctor, and there is no requirement for them to have examined, or even met, the patient. A video-link consultation in the four weeks prior to death is now felt to be sufficient for death to be attributed to Covid-19.
(05.06.2020)
Clare Gardiner, head of cyber resilience and strategy at the UK National Cyber Security Centre — a branch of signals intelligence agency GCHQ — will become the centre’s first director-general, responsible for advising ministers on the “alert level” for the virus; which is similar to assessing the terror threat.
Ms Gardiner’s role at the NCSC involves advising businesses and public organisations on how to improve their cyber defences, and she will return to this post after her secondment at the centre. But her research background in epidemiology and medical statistics make her well-suited to the role, according to one person familiar with her appointment.
She will report to Dido Harding, who is in charge of the NHS test and trace service.
The decision to put a security official in charge is likely to cause consternation among public health experts, who have questioned whether the template of a terror analysis centre is appropriate for managing a viral pandemic,
Elderly and infirm people in Oxford, London, Brighton, Morecambe in Lancashire and Nuneaton in Warwickshire are due to be first to receive the jab.
A total of 530,000 doses will be made available at 540 GP vaccination sites and 101 hospitals this week.
The NHS has ordered 100million doses which it is hoped will free the country from Covid-19.
Hospitals at six NHS trusts across London, Brighton, Oxford, Morecambe and Nuneaton will be the first to give the vaccine.
It will reach more than 500 GP surgeries and community centres by the end of the week — with PM Boris Johnson saying “we are going as fast as we can”.
The Sun joined forces with the NHS and the Royal Voluntary Service to urge readers to volunteer as stewards at the pop-up vaccination centres across the UK. It launched on New Year’s Day.
According to the latest figures, 7,744 have signed up to help, with most of those crediting The Sun.
Catherine Johnstone CBE, chief exec of the Royal Voluntary Service, said: “The response from Sun readers has been incredible.
The initial supplies of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine have been produced by a company called Halix in the Netherlands.
Once produced in bulk, the vaccine goes to a plant in Wrexham, run by an Indian company called Wockhardt, where it is decanted into vials in a process known as ‚fill and finish‘. The plant can bottle at least 150,000 doses a day.
While the Oxford vaccine uses a harmless, weakened version of a common virus in chimpanzees, the Pfizer jab is known as a messenger vaccine (MRNA), using a genetic code rather than a weakened form of the virus.
And experts have urged patients not to mix and match the two.
Everyone can see what a serious emergency this is. We have to act. Bin the bureaucracy, and get this miracle vaccine to work right now.
Von der Leyen spoke by telephone to Johnson on Monday night to discuss a way forward and further calls are expected in the next 24 hours, but the commission refused to offer details.
Barnier said as he went into a meeting with EU ambassadors: “We are really in the crucial moment. We are giving it the final push. In 10 days the UK will leave the single market and we continue to work in total transparency with the member states right now and with the parliament.”
The Nuffield Trust thinktank stated: “The perilously uncertain future facing the UK at the end of the Brexit transition period could put the UK’s health and care system at risk.”
The report said new migration rules, possible disruption to medicines and devices, an ongoing economic slowdown and barriers to science investment would hit the health sector.
The warning came as a negotiated Brexit deal looks increasingly unlikely and Health Secretary Matt Hancock described the new variant of coronavirus as being „out of control“.
Der NHS befürchtet zudem, dass Rettungswagen aufgrund von Lastwagenstaus vor allem in der südostenglischen Grafschaft Kent am Ärmelkanal, einem Zentrum der Corona-Infektionen, nicht rechtzeitig die Patienten erreichen könnten. Johnsons Regierung hat eine Verlängerung der Übergangsphase bisher strikt abgelehnt.
But Whitehall sources said that while they hoped the vaccine would be available that week, it was by no means certain, and the authorisation could be delayed until the beginning of January.
The delay has caused frustration in Whitehall and the NHS, with the vaccine taking much longer to meet approval than the Pfizer vaccine, which was rolled out in the UK last week.