Current UK Risk Level: HIGH

The risk to the UK remains high (as of 13/03/2020).

As of week commencing 11/05/2020, we’re moving into Phase two (Smarter controls) of the Government’s recovery strategy. As per PM’s 11 May message, the country is in the process of moving from Level 4 to Level 3 by the new COVID Alert System and taking the first step in relaxing lockdown measures – According to the PM’s statement “Thanks to the hard work and sacrifices of the British people in this lockdown, we have helped to bring the R level down and we are now in a position to begin moving to Level 3, in steps”.

 

Please note the Government’s messaging is now  â€˜stay alert, control the virus, save lives’ (previously ‘stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives’)

 

Current UK Situation

• As of 9am on 14 June, 295,889 people have tested positive. As of 5pm on 13 June, of those who tested positive for coronavirus in the UK, across all settings, 41,698 have died. You can view the latest UK dashboard and cases by local authority here. Confirmed cases in Suffolk are broken down by Districts & Boroughs as follows:

 

Ipswich	352	255.2 per 100,000 resident
East Suffolk	623	251.0 per 100,000 resident
Mid Suffolk	183	178.5 per 100,000 resident
Babergh	153	167.4 per 100,000 resident
West Suffolk	235	131.4 per 100,000 resident
Suffolk	1,546	203.8 per 100,000 resident

 

• Government daily COVID-19 press conference – no press conferences during the weekend. Archive of slides, datasets and transcripts to accompany coronavirus press conferences available here.
• New rules on face coverings in effect from today (15 June) – Passengers who don’t follow the new rules on face coverings will not be allowed to travel on public transport (including buses, coaches, trams, ferries, aircraft and trains). Over 3,000 extra staff will be deployed from Monday to support the travelling public, reminding people about the need to wear face coverings and helping vulnerable passengers. Exemptions for the use of face coverings will apply to some groups as detailed in the press release.

• Coronavirus and the social impacts on Great Britain: 12 June 2020 – Indicators from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey covering the period 4 June to 7 June 2020 to understand the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on people, households and communities in Great Britain. Key points include:

• • Just under 4 in 10 adults in employment (37%) said they had left their home to travel to and from work in the past seven days, decreasing from 40% last week;
  • 3 in 10 adults (30%) reported that they had used face coverings outside of their home in the past week, a slight increase when compared with last week (28%);
  • For those it was applicable to, over half of parents (51%) in England felt either very or quite unconfident in sending their children back to school in June, a decrease from 63% last week.

• Coronavirus (COVID-19): ministerial direction for early payment of local authority grants – Letters authorising the early release of 2 grants to local authorities totalling £3.4 billion to allow them to act on the government’s recent announcements to tackle Covid-19.
• SPI-M-O Statement on bubbles, 13 May 2020 – Consensus statement prepared by the SAGE subgroup SPI-M-O on bubbles. Key statements include that clustering of additional contacts within social bubbles can be an effective means of controlling any increase in R while allowing more contacts. Current measures have created bubbles of one household.
• On What We Know—And Don’t Know—About COVID-19-Related Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (podcast) – Dr. Lasya Gaur, a paediatric cardiologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, talks with Stephanie Desmon about what we know and what we still need to learn about this disease, what parents should know, and what treatments have been helpful for children who become ill.
• BBC: Long queues as shops reopen in England after lockdown – Shops across England will welcome back customers today for the first time in almost three months
• BBC: Secondary schools bring pre-exam pupils in for face time – Some secondary pupils in England facing exams next year are heading into school from Monday for face-to-face time with their teachers.
• BBC: Global picture:

• • France is lifting many of its restrictions from Monday too. Cafes and restaurants can open, travel to other European countries will be allowed and people will be able to visit family members in retirement homes. It comes as a number of other European nations re-open their borders, including Belgium, Croatia and Germany.
  • Weeks after India eased what was arguably the world’s harshest lockdown, its case numbers are skyrocketing
  • A strict lockdown has been reimposed in part of China’s capital Beijing after the city’s first coronavirus cases in more than 50 days. The outbreak is linked to a big city market.

Suffolk

 

Play your part in creating a safer Suffolk: Suffolk residents are being asked to play their part in reducing infection and shopping local as businesses re-open across the county this week.Councils, partners and businesses have been introducing temporary or trial measures to help people shop and stay safe while keeping to national guidelines. Support to make this happen comes from the ‘Safer Places’ group, part of the Suffolk Resilience Forum, which is made up of Suffolk’s NHS, Emergency and Public Services. Click here to read more.

 

Test and Trace Update:

 

National update and overview: The NHS Test and Trace service has now been running for a couple of weeks, and early reports indicate it has been performing well. More than 31,000 people have been identified through the programme as needing to self-isolate. This is helping to break the chain of infection and save lives. The programme operates on three levels;

 

Level 3 – National Contact Tracers – call handlers who reach out to contacts of people with COVID-19 who cannot be reached by text or email to encourage them to use the web-based system. They will also be able to help people who are having problems with the system or do not have access to a computer. They will escalate complex cases to Level 2.

 

Level 2 – National Clinical Contact Tracers –Teams of NHS and Public Health professionals interview cases by phone to understand where they have been and who they met. This might include people with confirmed COVID-19 who are under 18, who can’t be contacted through text or email or don’t have access to a computer. They will deal with more complex tracing of contacts and escalate issues to Level 1.

 

Level 1 – Regional and local Public Health Specialists – This work is led by regional Public Health England centres, who are responsible for managing infectious disease outbreaks in non Covid times.  This level, supported by local authorities focuses on contact tracing in more complex settings, such as schools or workplaces and groups and individuals who may require additional support, for example people with Learning Difficulties or serious mental ill health. At this level there is communication between the national programme and local areas to inform any action that is required locally. Based on this data, the Local Authority and Public Health England provide the response to any local complex issues or outbreaks and provide the appropriate local preventative support. 

 

Suffolk update: In Suffolk are currently developing a Local Outbreak Control Plan, which will be implemented by 30^th June, as required by the Government. The plan sets out how we will protect the health of the people of Suffolk by;

• preventing the spread of COVID-19 among different settings, communities and vulnerable individuals
• early identification and proactive management of outbreaks
• containing and suppressing outbreaks of COVID-19
• co-ordination of people and resources across agencies and stakeholders
• communicating with the public and stakeholders
• establishment of member governance arrangements

 

There are nine delivery strand workstreams that have been identified to complete this work. These workstreams are in the process of identifying different settings, groups and individuals, their level of risk from the virus, actions to reduce the risk and processes for responding to an outbreak. To support the delivery strand workstreams, a number of enabler workstreams have been initiated, these include Testing, Data, Governance and Enforcement. As part of the plan Suffolk is also establishing a Public Health driven Test and Trace Operations Centre (TTOC) which will provide a single point of contact to receive and distribute national guidance and offer direct support and co-ordination to settings in the event of an outbreak. This will be a seven-day service and aims to be live by the end of June.

 

How you can help

 

We all have a part to play in reducing the spread of Covid-19 and you can help by sharing the following messages and resources through your networks:

If you develop symptoms of coronavirus, you must immediately self-isolate at home and get a test.

If you test positive, you must share your recent contacts with NHS Test and Trace.

If you are advised to self-isolate by NHS Test & Trace, you must do so. By following instructions to self-isolate, anyone who has had close recent contact with someone with coronavirus will be protecting their family, friends, colleagues and other people around them. This will break the chain of infection, helping to avoid a second peak and safely get life back to normal.

 

More information about Test and Trace in Suffolk is available at www.suffolk.gov.uk/testing

 

Useful Websites (any new guidance is in RED)

The existing guidance is being updated extremely regularly so please check any guidance relevant to your area to ensure that you are accessing the most up to date version. We are not including in this table all the published material but some of the key guidance that would be relevant to Suffolk County Council and our partners.

 

	Title	Who For	Comments
NEW	Changes to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme	Employers and employees	The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme will close on 31 October 2020. This paper explains the details of this change.
NEW	Making the most of reduced classroom time	Education and childcare settings	Deciding what to teach in the classroom and what to teach at home.
NEW	Planning a curriculum to teach at school and at home	Education and childcare settings	Includes: – Deciding what to teach on site and what to teach remotely – Deciding contact time by subject – Teaching the curriculum with less time on site – Maintaining curriculum breadth with less classroom time – Case studies
NEW	Pastoral care in the curriculum	Education and childcare settings	How schools can provide additional emotional and pastoral support for pupils when they return to school following the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
UPDATED	The R number in the UK		As of 12 June, the latest R number range for the UK is 0.7-0.9.
UPDATED	Meeting people from outside your household	everyone	Updated with the changes to support bubbles that are in effect from 13 June.
UPDATED	Working safely during coronavirus (COVID-19)	employers, employees and the self-employed	Shops and branches – Updated to reflect industry feedback, updated guidance on managing product handling and returns, guidance on test and trace service, guidance on safer travel and to provide guidance on managing security risks.
UPDATED	Coronavirus (COVID-19) testing: privacy information	critical workers and their household members	Updated privacy notice and quick read to say that if you test positive, you may be contacted by text message to see whether you wish to donate blood plasma, as part of the potential treatment for coronavirus. Updated the Department of Health and Social Care’s data protection officer to Ian Stone.
UPDATED	Check if you can claim a grant through the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme	self-employed	Further information about the extension to the scheme has been added.
UPDATED	COVID-19: infection prevention and control (IPC)	Healthcare workers, carers and care settings	New government recommendations for England NHS hospital trusts and private hospital providers. By 15 June 2020: – hospitals should ensure that measures are in place so that all settings are, where practicable, COVID-secure, using social distancing, optimal hand hygiene, frequent surface decontamination, ventilation and other measures where appropriate – in all settings that are unable to be delivered as COVID-19 secure, all hospital staff (both in clinical and non-clinical roles), when not otherwise required to use personal protective equipment, should wear a facemask; worn to prevent the spread of infection from the wearer – visitors and outpatients to hospital settings should wear a form of face covering for the same reason, to prevent the spread of infection from the wearer
1	NHS – COVID-19 go-to page	General Public
2	GOV.UK – COVID-19 homepage	Main cover webpage for all government guidance for public & professionals alike
3	Coronavirus (COVID-19): guidance	Main collection of guidance for anyone in any setting	Guidance includes: – Guidance for the public (incl. social distancing and shielding) – Guidance for non-clinical settings (incl. cleaning, educational settings, employees, employers, businesses, residential care, supported living and home care) – Guidance for health professionals – Infection prevention and control (incl. PPE) – Sampling and diagnostics
4	Heatwave Plan for England	Professionals
5	Mental health support and advice from: WHO mentalhealth.org.uk Ipswich & East CCG Living Life To The Full NHS Practitioner Wellbeing Samaritans	General public, staff and carers
6	Chronic disease self- care during COVID-19: Asthma Diabetes	General public
7	European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) COVID-19 homepage	Professionals

 

 

Local Resources:

Below are any local resources that would be relevant to Suffolk County Council and our partners.  

 

	Title	Who For	Comments
	Support from the Suffolk Growth Programme Board (SGPB)	Everyone	SGPB is a partnership of all Suffolk local authorities, Suffolk Chamber of Commerce, University of Suffolk and New Anglia LEP. In Suffolk our Economy & business recovery work for COVID- 19 is being led by SGPB and the website includes links to funding / surveys / economic impact work. Please do pass this information on to your contacts.
	Suffolk Domestic Abuse 24/7 Helpline – Freephone 0800 977 5690	Everyone	The freephone number is live from 9am on Friday 22nd May 2020 for anyone with concerns including professionals who may be supporting clients as well as friends and family members who are concerned for loved ones.
	New Anglia: Employment Opportunities in Key Sectors in Norfolk and Suffolk	Individuals and Businesses wanting to know what employment opportunities are available in some of our key sectors	The New Anglia LEP – alongside other partners including local authorities – have pulled together lists and links to key employment roles needed now as part of the response to the current crisis.
	Suffolk Safeguarding Partnership	Everyone	The website aims to help everyone understand the signs of neglect or abuse and what to do if they are worried about a child or an adult.
	NEW ANGLIA GROWTH HUB	Businesses needing support ­	A one stop shop source of information for government support and guidance available to  businesses including 121 business advice sources of business grants and loans.
	Healthy Suffolk: COVID-19 Emotional Wellbeing, Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Information Hub	Everyone	This page contains links to a wealth of resources and support for your health and wellbeing.
	Suffolk County Council: Coronavirus information	Everyone	Suffolk County Council coronavirus (COVID-19) information, including health advice, service changes, business support and schools guidance.
	Keep Moving Suffolk	Everyone	The website contains free resources, ideas, tips, useful links and positive stories to encourage people to stay active during these unprecedented times.  The website and our social channels will be constantly updated.

 

 

Global: WHO Situation Report – reports available here

• WHO Covid-19 Dashboard for professionals using near real time data.
• GOARN COVID-19 Knowledge hub – central repository of quality public health information, guidance, tools and webinars which can be accessed freely at any point.

 

Situation in Numbers WHO SitRep 146, 14 June