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Primary Care Bulletin - today's round-up
8 December 2020
Dear colleagues,
Yesterday we wrote to wave one PCN designated sites who will begin vaccinating patients from Tuesday 15 December. We are extremely grateful to these sites for being at the forefront of such a critical vaccination programme. We will be holding a series of webinars over the coming days including one on Thursday 10 December at 5.30pm for anyone in primary care seeking further updates on the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
Dr Keith Ridge, CBE Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for England, has also written to CCG chief pharmacists and heads of medicines optimisation on the governance, handling, and preparation of the COVID-19 vaccines.
This is a fast-moving environment and we are doing all we can to get information and guidance to you as quickly as possible. Please do check the FutureNHS workspace regularly as this is a central resource for information and includes a forum for asking questions which we will do our best to respond to.
Supporting people with symptoms of Long COVID
We are making progress on establishing support for people experiencing symptoms of Long COVID, including Long COVID assessment services and the Your COVID Recovery interactive web-based programme, developed to support the recovery of individuals recovering from COVID-19.
Each region has an identified lead for post COVID services, details of which are available on the Primary Care FutureNHS site, along with information on how local teams or post COVID assessment services can refer patients to Your COVID Recovery. Please contact your regional lead for further information on Long COVID services and patient pathways in your area.
NICE, SIGN and RCGP are due to publish guidance on Long COVID before the end of the year. You can read more about what this guidance will cover on the NICE website.
Raj and Ali
Dr Raj Patel
GP and Deputy Medical Director for Primary Care, NHS England and NHS Improvement
Ali Sparke
Interim Director for Primary Care Covid Response, NHS England and NHS Improvement
COVID-19 updates and guidance
COVID-19 vaccinations and care homes: programme launch
Helen Whately, Minister for Care, has written to care homes [for older adults], local authority chief executives, and directors of adult social services, outlining plans for getting the first COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech) to care home staff, from the first day vaccinations are available. The initial focus is on vaccinating care home workers and the over 80s. Vaccines will be available from Tuesday 8 December 2020, initially in up to 50 Hospital Hubs across England.
Flu updates
Update on central supplies of flu vaccines
The initial allocation of QIVe, QIVc and QIVr (Flublok) which was allocated to GP practices and NHS providers has now been ordered. In response to this demand, additional doses of QIVc have been made available. If GP practices or NHS providers need further stock, they should now order Adjuvanted Trivalent Influenza Vaccine (aTIV) for those over 65 years old or Cell-grown Quadrivalent Influenza Vaccine (QIVc) for those under 65 years old. Both of these vaccines are currently available from Seqirus.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) guidance to GPs has been updated to reflect this latest change of supplier, and you should contact Seqirus at dhscvaccines@seqirus.com to request an order form and then send back the completed order form to the same email address. We expect the Seqirus stock to run out shortly, but the guidance will continue to be updated with which suppliers have stock, particularly for under 65s, so please refer to it if you are unable to get stock from Seqirus.
Practices should refer to the updated guidance for information on how to access vaccines from suppliers.
Ensuring local supply of flu vaccine
Practices are reminded that they can access additional flu vaccine supplies from centrally procured stock once their own local stocks are depleted. The MHRA has granted a dispensation to allow movement of vaccines locally between practices and other NHS provider organisations and we would encourage you to work with your regional NHSEI Public Health Commissioning team to understand what stock is available locally before accessing the additional supply. Practices may also wish to liaise with other providers within their Primary Care Network. The additional supply should only be used when there are no other alternative options to accessing more vaccines.
Recording flu and pertussis vaccination given by a maternity provider
Practices are reminded that where they receive notification from a maternity provider that a pregnant woman has been vaccinated by a maternity service for Flu and/or Pertussis that this will need to be scanned and coded onto the patients record to ensure that patient records are appropriately updated:
- seasonal influenza vaccination given by midwife: SNOMED Concept ID 1066171000000108
- pertussis vaccination in pregnancy given by other health care provider: SNOMED Concept ID 956971000000108.
Capacity tracker
We have identified many care providers that have not updated their flu data on the Capacity Tracker. It is important that users keep the tracker up to date so DHSC and NHS England and NHS Improvement can accurately track flu vaccine uptake and supply.
General practice
Update on Covid swab testing in general practice
One month ago, NHS Test and Trace rolled out a new service making Covid PCR swab testing capability available to all general practices in England on a voluntary, opt in basis. Since then, over 3,100 practices have registered to use the service with 163,000 test kits ordered. To celebrate this milestone, Dr Mike Holmes, General Practitioner in Yorkshire and Clinical Advisor for GP testing in NHS Test and Trace, has written a blog to talk about his perspective of the new service and to thank his colleagues.
A short survey has been emailed to practices who have opted into the service to gain feedback and find out where the service can be improved. Please do take the time to have your say.
Primary care
New digital playbooks show how technology can improve care and support staff
NHSX has launched a new library of digital resources as part of a programme of work supporting the commitment to reduce face-to-face outpatient appointments by up to a third over the next five years, as set out in the NHS Long Term Plan.
The digital ‘playbooks’ are aimed at NHS clinical staff wanting to explore how technology can help support them and improve care. They cover the five highest-volume specialities: cardiology; respiratory; ophthalmology; musculoskeletal and dermatology. Further playbooks are planned next year.
They have been developed with national clinical directors and all content is clinically assured. Get in touch with your feedback.
Send in your festive pictures or videos
We’re asking for primary care colleagues to send in pictures or videos of their teams by 16 December for a chance to be included in our special festive video later in the month. We want to say thank you and to celebrate all your hard work and achievements. Please send to england.primarycare-covidcomms@nhs.net. We can’t wait to see them!
Dates for your diary
PCPA National Conferences sessions on GP referral pathway to Community Pharmacist Consultation Service (CPCS). Sessions on the new GP referral pathway to CPCS at both PCPA South and North regional conferences are taking place as part of the Digital Frontier workshops.
Thursday 10 December, 5.30pm - 6.30pm. Primary Care - COVID-19 vaccination programme webinar
Thursday 10 December, 10.30am - 11.30am. NHS Volunteer Responder programme update webinar
Friday 11 December, 2pm - 3pm. GatewayC webinar: Diagnosing Ovarian Cancer
Link of the day
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