Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many local authority areas are trialling the clipper distribution system for personal protective equipment during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The personal protective equipment (PPE) Portal has now been rolled out to general practitioners and small social care providers in all local authorities in England, totalling over 21,000 providers and delivering over 22 million items of PPE. Originally, the pilot involved inviting small groups of healthcare providers to register with the portal from the following local resilience forum (LRF) areas:
- Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly;
- Northumbria;
- Nottinghamshire;
- Hertfordshire; and
- Thames Valley.
As the LRFs are based on police areas, the list above does not correspond to local authority boundaries. For example, Northumberland, Newcastle, Gateshead, South Tyneside, North Tyneside and Sunderland local authorities are all within Northumbria LRF.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what was the value of contracts awarded to (a) eBay and (b) Clipper Logistics to develop an online portal to enable primary, social and community care providers to order personal protective equipment.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The contract with Clipper Logistics was put in place by Supply Chain Coordination Ltd (SCCL), the management function of NHS Supply Chain, via a sub-contract with its existing primary logistics supplier. This was for an initial 3 month period from March to June at a value of £1.3m (monthly extensions at estimated values of £450,000) for storage and distribution of PPE to all NHS Trusts. This contract was subsequently varied for a 3 month period from May to July at a value of £1.95m (monthly extensions at estimated values of £650,000) to provide an eCommerce solution involving an eBay platform for the storage and distribution of PPE by Clipper to care homes and GP surgeries.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many individual items of personal protective equipment have been delivered to local authorities through the Clipper distribution system to date.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government is working with e-commerce expertise to roll out a new online portal to help primary care and small social care providers to order critical personal protective equipment (PPE). The PPE Portal acts as an emergency top-up route for health care providers that cannot obtain sufficient PPE through their usual wholesaler routes.
All health and care providers should continue to use their usual wholesaler routes as their primary access route for PPE, whether invited to register with the portal or not.
As of Tuesday 30 June, over 16 million items of PPE have been delivered via the PPE Portal, with over 11,000 orders for PPE having been made.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that local authority public health officials receive data on positive covid-19 test results in their local authority area.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
The priority has always been to ensure that public health bodies, such as Public Health England (PHE), have the data they require under the Health Protection (Notification) Regulations, and under the updates to the Control of Patient Information Regulations, to undertake their vital work in relation to contact tracing, case management and health surveillance. PHE provides the results to the appropriate local PHE Health Protection Team, who work with their respective local authorities as part of their routine public health response arrangements. We are developing a solution for our stakeholders to access the additional Management Information data that will further support their work, and local authorities and the National Health Service are top priorities.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how the new Joint Biosecurity Centre will interact with Local Resilience Forms and Local Health Protection Boards.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Joint Biosecurity Centre is aligned to the CONTAIN strand of the Government’s Test, Trace, Contain and Enable programme. The aim of CONTAIN is to prevent local outbreaks and, where not possible, to contain them locally to minimise the spread of the virus and avoid the need for escalation to a national lockdown.
The JBC/CONTAIN’s regional teams will work closely with local authorities, Local Health Protection Teams and Local Resilience Forums in managing outbreaks of COVID-19 at a local level. Further information on how the JBC will link in with these organisations will be provided in the near future.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, by what means local authorities were informed of the launch date of the NHS test and trace service.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
The upcoming launch of the Test and Trace Service was announced to local authorities on Friday 22 May as a briefing note, press release and slide pack announcing the service and £300 million to develop local outbreak control plans which tailor the authorities’ response to the virus at the local level.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department holds data on the proportion of identified contacts who are then traced as a part of the NHS Test and Trace system.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
These data are collected as management information from the NHS Test and Trace Service. The Department plans to publish information from the first week of the tracing service, on Thursday 11 June.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what additional resources his Department plans to provide to local authorities to support the test, track and trace programme during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
We have agreed £300 million worth of new dedicated funding to support local authorities with implementing Test and Trace and local outbreak plans.
This money will be allocated shortly following standard procedures.
Alongside financial contributions, the NHS Test and Trace service is developing comprehensive guidance to assist local authorities in developing their own COVID-19 outbreak plans.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department has taken to engage with local authorities on the use of their staff for the purposes of covid-19 contact tracing.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
Local authority staff will be a key part of contact tracing as the NHS Test and Trace service focusing on local outbreak management and this element of the service is being developed jointly between Public Health England and representatives from local government sector organisations.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will publish the number of patients admitted to hospitals from care homes on (a) a weekly basis from 1 February 2020 to date and (b) the weekly average for admissions for the same time period for each year between 2015 and 2019.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Information is not available in the format requested.