An Alliance of over 18 organisations, including DAUK, which has campaigned for over 16 months to give health workers the protection from Covid-19 they need in the workplace, welcomes new guidance which stipulates that Covid is spread by airborne transmission and that health workers are entitled to enhanced levels of protective equipment.

The Covid Airborne Protection Alliance (CAPA) and British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS) issued the following statement this afternoon:

The NHS and the wider healthcare system are still in the grips of dealing with the usual winter pressures along with the significant impact of COVID-19, not only on staff sickness levels but also with the ongoing delivery of services to meet the needs of the populations we serve. As a result, the challenges of ensuring the safety and resilience of the NHS and wider workforce along with patient safety are greater than ever, not withstanding the planned reduction in Covid restrictions announced 19^th January.

For the last 16 months the Covid Airborne Protection Alliance (CAPA) has been campaigning to influence IPC Guidance to ensure that all healthcare workers can access the right level of respiratory protective equipment to protect them from COVID-19. 

We have worked with the British Medical Association (BMA), Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS) to support consistency of messaging to government, other key stakeholders and our healthcare workforce.

This includes alerting system leaders of the need to meet their legal responsibilities as laid out in the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 etc for ensuring the safety of the healthcare workforce through the provision of appropriate respiratory protective equipment (RPE). 

We have evidence that over 30 NHS Trusts across the UK are now leading the way in how they assess workplace risk and provide staff with appropriate levels of RPE including FFP3. 

We are therefore pleased to see that, this week, the Government made important updates to two pieces of guidance which will help to keep healthcare workers, patients and the public safe. 

Dr Barry Jones, Chair of CAPA said:

“I’m delighted that the new IPC guidance makes it clear that healthcare workers can have access to enhanced levels of respiratory protective equipment without being restricted to the current list of aerosol generating procedures (AGPs) which is no longer relevant. 

“The IPC guidance however does not specify how COVID-19 is transmitted, placing risk assessment at the mercy of individual employers or managers views or assumptions on this key part of the risk assessment process. We are pleased the Cabinet Office guidance explicitly states that COVID-19 is spread by airborne transmission, close contact via droplets, and via surfaces. Airborne transmission is a very significant way that the virus circulates.”

“The Cabinet Office guidance is consistent with other government guidance such as that from the Department for Education (England), Coronavirus (COVID-19) and the use of face coverings in education settings (publishing.service.gov.uk) which  highlights that the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has advised that Omicron might show more airborne transmission.

Professor Kevin Bampton, CEO of BOHS added: 

“System leaders now need to mobilise their health and safety and IPC leads to ensure appropriate risk assessments are carried out and the right level of RPE is provided in a safe and effective manner. This includes ensuring that fit-testing for FFP3 is available, and reusuable FFP3 equivalent masks can also be accessed.”

DAUK Chair, Dr Jenny Vaughan, said: 

“For far too long, far too many of our colleagues have been left exposed unnecessarily to Covid because their PPE was simply inadequate. The public were put at more risk as a result. This new guidance, issued after months of work by the CAPA, draws the clear line: no one should be expected to work to save lives if putting their own at risk avoidably was part of the deal. Now it is agreed. This should never happen and this is how the risks, not lives, are cut.”

Dr Christine Peters, Consultant Microbiologist FreshAirNHS commented: 

“As SARsCOV 2 transmits by travelling in aerosols produced when breathing, speaking and talking it is crucial that healthcare workers are provided with the correct RPE to ensure protection for them and their patients. We are delighted to see a change in guidance that advocates for this in line with WHO and urge all employers to ensure rapid roll out of respiratory level protection for this airborne infection”

Notes to editors 

Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) is an organisation run by frontline doctors for frontline doctors. 

Their Communications Lead is Alan Taman:

press@dauk.org

07870 757309

The new guidance measures

The updated infection prevention control (IPC) guidance:

The Cabinet Office guidance:

Further details on routes of transmission of COVID-19, risk assessment and different types of RPE can be found on the RCN website

Covid Airborne Protection Alliance (CAPA) includes:

 ·      ARTP – Association for Respiratory Technology & Physiology·      BAPEN – British Association for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition·      BIASP – British & Irish Association of Stroke Physicians·      BDA – British Dietetic Association·      BSG – British Society of Gastroenterology·      CBS – Confederation of British Surgery ·      College of Paramedics Natasha.Weale@collegeofparamedics.co.uk·      CSP – Chartered Society of Physiotherapy·      FreshAir NHS·      GMB Union·      HCSA – Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association·      Medical Supply Drive UK·      NNNG – National Nurses Nutrition Group·      QNI – Queen’s Nursing Institute·      RCSLT – Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists·      Unite the Union·      DAUK- The Doctors Association·      Trident HS&E 

BOHS British Occupational Hygiene Society

Covid-19 has caused chaos for me over the past month, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. I’ve got children in primary school, work as a GP – and yes, I do see most of my patients face-to-face – and I’ve had to leave my safe little corner of rural Wales a lot recently, for a party, a course and a wedding.

One striking thing, especially going across the border into England, is how people’s habits around mask wearing vary so dramatically in different settings.

We know that Covid is an airborne virus, so it seems completely sensible that wearing masks when we’re indoors with other people should be normalised. It certainly has become so in most other parts of the world, but somehow, in the UK, nothing is so straightforward.

Travelling through England last weekend on a packed train, windows closed and steamy, I noticed that only a handful of passengers wore masks. We loosely clustered together at one end of the carriage.

For all the debate about mask mandates and hype about ‘freedom day’, the UK population is still quite uninformed about some of the most important basic facts about masks.

There’s a growing body of evidence that says mask quality is important. An FFP3 mask, which seals on the wearer’s face, is better than an FFP2, which is fitted but not sealed. Below them come surgical masks, and then cloth masks.

I rarely see anyone wearing an FFP2 or FFP3 in any setting, and yet, if you or your immediate contacts are clinically vulnerable, that would be one of the best interventions within your power, after vaccination, to reduce your risk. I’ve yet to find a brick-and-mortar pharmacy or shop selling them, although you can order them easily online. And at this stage in the pandemic, there shouldn’t be any supply problems. You won’t be depriving a health worker or carer. Only the UK’s inadequate PPE guidance does that.

Counterintuitively, when something is worth doing, it’s also worth doing badly. In the same way that brushing your teeth for 20 seconds is better than not brushing them at all, a person wearing some sort of mask some of the time is better than none at all.

And the more you do it, the more benefit you get. In the context of a pandemic, if we want to get our rates down, it’s probably better for lots of people to do a half-hearted job of it, than only a handful of people to do it really well. That’s why we need to work hard to normalise mask wearing across as many indoor settings as possible.

At my cousin’s wedding, I was the only person wearing a mask. I went for a black cloth one which didn’t detract from my outfit. In the lovely, spacious, high-ceilinged hotel it felt like a safe compromise. Several people told me they’d planned to wear one themselves, but didn’t feel brave enough or want to stand out. Removing the mask mandate from social settings appears to have actually made those people feel less free to protect themselves and their loved ones.

In parliament, Jacob Rees-Mogg expressed a health belief which would be quite quaint if it wasn’t so dangerous to the general population: that the ‘convivial, fraternal spirit’ between him and his fellow Conservatives would somehow protect them from giving each other coronavirus.

The message that masks aren’t necessary between friends makes it harder for those who want to take the logical step of wearing one when they meet indoors to socialise. Care Minister Gillian Keegan’s reference to masks as a ‘sign of virtue’ adds yet another psychological barrier. Who wants to be seen as a neurotic, unfriendly virtue-signaler?

If public health departments and Government are serious in wanting to control the pandemic and avoid further lockdown, it shouldn’t be beyond them to create a marketing campaign that makes mask wearing more attractive. To give wearing a mask a different meaning than the one it has currently. We need to normalise mask wearing across as many different settings where people share air as possible, like most of the rest of the world.

The strongest argument I can think of is: Mask Up! Everyone’s doing it.

The Doctors’ Association U.K. encourage you to share your #maskup photos on social media – follow us on Twitter @theDA_UK and Instagram @thedoctorsassociationuk

Read the original piece in Mail Plus here