Daily Insight: Another test for NHS staff | Expert Briefing

It might simply have escaped consideration, buried within the penultimate bullet level, however yesterday a letter despatched by probably the most senior clinicians within the NHS has strengthened expectations on NHS staff who’ve simply returned from overseas.
It mentioned that NHS staff getting back from any non red-list nation will need to have a destructive PCR test earlier than returning to work.
The letter, despatched by chief medical officer Chris Whitty, nationwide nursing director at NHS England Ruth May and chief medical adviser for the UK Health and Security Agency Susan Hopkins, mentioned all NHS staff also needs to be taking lateral circulate checks for 10 days after returning to the UK.
This information in fact follows the identification of a brand new covid variant by scientists in South Africa final week – Omicron is considered extra transmissible than the Delta variant and present vaccines could also be much less efficient towards it.
Although asking NHS staff to have a destructive PCR test earlier than returning to work is unlikely to have a significant operational affect, it does spotlight how very involved medical leaders are about its affect.
Segregation proves divisive
New an infection management steerage has really useful that trusts calm down the segregation of sufferers in line with covid-19 threat.
But the federal government shouldn’t assume this can dramatically change the NHS’s capability to ship extra operations, NHS Providers has mentioned.
Chris Hopson, chief government of NHS Providers, has warned that some individuals in central authorities would not have a “absolutely rounded view” of how difficult this will likely be for belief leaders – who should stability the chance of infections with the necessity to perform extra operations.
The steerage by UK well being our bodies tells belief leaders that sufferers not should be segregated into pathways based mostly on “excessive,” “medium,” or “low” threat of covid. However, it mentioned these pathways “can nonetheless be utilized by organisations domestically”.  
There is more likely to be a creating image on an infection management steerage over the following few weeks in mild of the omicron variant.