Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to ensure that medical professionals received guidance on how (1) to differentiate between, and (2) to treat, patients with varying severity levels of COVID-19 infections.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, NHS England and NHS Improvement have published a comprehensive range of online only guides for use by clinical staff and National Health Service managers to support the management of patients.

Clinical guide for the management of emergency department patients during the coronavirus pandemic, published on 17 March, sets out the categories of acute patients to consider for obligatory inpatient emergency admissions, as well as a flowchart for emergency department attendances and key steps in optimising the acute care pathways for all patient groups.

Reference guide for emergency medicine, published on 22 April, includes an algorithm agreed with the British Society of Thoracic Imaging that focuses on disease severity and differentiation from other diseases.

Guidance for the role and use of non-invasive respiratory support in adult patients with COVID19 (confirmed or suspected), published on 6 April, should be used to guide clinicians on the appropriate use of continuous positive airway pressure, non-invasive ventilation, and high flow nasal oxygen in patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19. It is designed to provide a useful aid to use alongside clinical judgement and can be adjusted to suit individual clinical environments.