Coronavirus: Protective Clothing

(asked on 20th April 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the phasing system for distributing personal protective equipment to different regions of the UK.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 7th May 2020

In response to calls from a number of local resilience forums (LRFs), we arranged to extend our personal protective equipment (PPE) supply route to LRFs to help local government distribute stock to smaller social care providers and other vital services where they have been unable to obtain PPE through their usual routes and have an urgent need.

In the week beginning 6 April we issued 37 million items of PPE across 38 local resilience Forums LRFs. All LRFs would have received their allocation by 13 April which was made in two drops.

The level of PPE provided to each LRF in the original allocation, was determined by the number of people within each area, adjusted for the number of people aged 70 and over. Over 7 million more items of PPE have been delivered over the last week to the LRFs identified as being in the highest need of resupply. We will continue to make drops of PPE for distribution by the LRFs to meet some priority need until the new e-commerce solution is operational.

We are monitoring stock levels and usage and working to restock some LRFs with the most urgent clinical need. It is important that LRFs return their data reports to help us identify those in need of an urgent restock.

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