Covid

Current Awareness Updates

Covid-19 recovery and resilience: what can health and care learn from other disasters? The King’s Fund

What do communities need to be able to recover from Covid-19 and build resilience? This long read identifies key insights from people involved in disaster recovery around the world.

Covid-19: rapid point of care or near-person testing for service providers Public Health England

(This guidance, aimed at service providers, describes the main types of coronavirus (Covid-19) tests currently available for use in point of care or near-person settings.)

Factors influencing COVID-19 vaccine uptake among minority ethnic groups, 17 December 2020.
Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE); 2021.

(Paper by the ethnicity sub-group on factors influencing COVID-19 vaccine uptake among minority ethnic groups. It was considered at SAGE 73 on 17 December 2020. The paper is the assessment of the evidence at the time of writing.)

COVID-19 Clinical management: living guidance.
World Health Organization (WHO); 2021.

(This document is the update of interim guidance published in May 2020. This guideline now also includes Best Practice Statement on caring for COVID-19 patients after their acute illness and 5 new recommendations.)

Prioritising the first COVID-19 vaccine dose: JCVI statement.
Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC); 2021.

(Statement from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) about increasing the short-term impact of the COVID-19 vaccination programme. Updated 26 January 2021: Added document ‘Annex B: comparison between 1 and 2 dose prioritisation for a fixed number of doses’.)

COVID-19: Ensuring a quality patient experience with the rise of digitisation in a healthcare setting.
Mobiquity; 2021.

(This report, commissioned by Mobiquity and conducted by Censuswide, reveals that half of UK patients aged over 55 preferred digital tools instead of in-person consultations during COVID-19. The most preferred digital tools used by over 55s included remote monitoring (50%) and video examinations (50%).)


Covid Virtual Ward (secondary care).
Wessex Academic Health Science Network (AHSN); 2021.

(The Covid Virtual Ward model is a secondary care led initiative to support early and safe discharge (step down) for Covid patients and builds on the Covid Oximetry @home model. NHS England and Improvement has now written out to all ICSs and trusts in the country; outlining why this work must be implemented, and how to do it.)

Reforming the finances of the NHS

Source: The King’s Fund- Health Management and Policy Alert

It is a time of transition in NHS finance. The planned recovery from years of deficits and debts that plagued parts of the NHS in recent years has been hit by the enormity of the Covid-19 shock. Alongside this planned recovery, the NHS has been moving away from its decades-long journey toward competition between individual organisations and using market-like approaches to improve performance, to a design based on collaboration and improving population health. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the NHS was working to restore financial health and deliver on fundamental reform; now, it must achieve these objectives with the added challenge of recovering from the damage of Covid-19.

A new financial architecture for the NHS requires coherence and balance, and a recognition that any national financial strategy will be heavily mediated by the quality of local relationships. The King’s Fund new long read discusses how lessons from the recent history of NHS finances can help the system plan for the future.

To read the article click here.