Gold update from Andrew

Published: 23 February 2021

Prynhawn da pawb,

Public Health Wales remains at ‘Enhanced Response’ level.  A big thanks to everyone across the organisation for their excellent, sustained work at this level.

The excellent work you are all doing is making a real difference to communities in Wales, and we can now see that the number of cases of Covid-19 is in decline in every part of the country, although the rate of decrease remains slower than in previous weeks and incident rates remains stubbornly high in some parts of Wales.

We have worked with Welsh Government over the last week to develop a common public health approach to the prevention and control of ‘Variants and Mutations of Concern (VAMC). It is common for viruses to mutate over time to produce new variants. The dominant strain of COVID-19 in Wales today, and across the UK is VOC-202012/01, which was first identified in Kent. This is different from the original “wild type” coronavirus we had in our communities and has proven to be more transmissible by between 30 and 50 per cent according to SAGE. 

We are also seeing cases of the South African variant in Wales, but these are largely in controlled clusters, linked to travel and there is currently no evidence of wider community transmission. As part of new border controls from 15 February 2021 anyone travelling to the UK from a country on the UK’s travel ban list (‘red list’) is now required to quarantine in a government-approved facility for 10 days.

The Welsh Government led vaccination programme is proceeding well, and whilst the number of hospital admissions is also decreasing, pressure on our NHS services continues.  Regrettably we continue to see a number of deaths each day, and our thoughts are with the families and loved ones left behind.

It is in the above context that Gold met on Thursday (18 February).  The meeting received an update on the revised response governance arrangements. The Public Health Wales IMT now meets three times a week, with strengthened communications with the Gold strategic leadership group.

The Wednesday IMT is now taking a more strategic forward look with input from the response elements within the organisation, while Monday and Friday remain operational.  Work to review and further strengthen all aspects of our response and governance continues and a further update will be received at the next Gold meeting.

Gold received a report on staff vaccinations, and just as we are receiving good news on the national stage, the news is good here too.  As of 15 February 2021, 810 of our front line staff have received their first dose and overall a total of 1,037 eligible members of staff have been vaccinated.  This is a staggering achievement, and enormous credit goes to staff who are working hard on vaccine deployment.

Vaccines are being rolled out in line with JCVI guidance to priority groups first, and we have this week moved into deploying the vaccine to groups five and six.  If you aren’t sure whether you are eligible for a vaccine, you can contact your line manager or PHW.CovidEnquiries@wales.nhs.uk to find out more.

Staff are reminded that there is no choice in which vaccine they receive, and that all vaccines approved for use in Wales are safe and effective, and provide excellent protection

I’ve mentioned how hard our staff are working.  Gold is extremely eager to ensure that the pace of current work is not adversely affecting staff wellbeing, and with this in mind, our POD team conducted a staff wellbeing survey in the autumn.

Almost a third of staff responded, and the results provide really useful information around wellbeing and motivation, including how our staff feel they are responding to the challenges of home working, and also how members of staff are responding when they are working outside their usual roles.  We will report the findings in full, but we can say that overall wellbeing levels are good, but with a significant proportion – 11 per cent – reporting low levels of wellbeing, especially in younger staff members.

We remind employees that help is available, including access to counselling and support, via staff wellbeing pages.

Calls to our National Call Centre appear to have reduced slightly, while remaining high.  The majority of calls relate to vaccines and school openings.

We continue to reinforce and enhance our health protection response, and Gold was extremely pleased with the news that Ministerial approval has been received for 109 health protection roles and 11 vaccination roles which were part of a business case submission to strengthen health protection. 
This approval allows us to bring in the resilience and capacity needed to maintain a sustainable health protection response.  Over time, this will also facilitate us to re-activate our other core public health functions and for mobilised staff to take up their substantive posts.

As Tracey said in her Q&A on Monday 15 February, we expect mobilisation arrangements to stay broadly as they are until 31 May 2021.  Staff who are mobilised in this way can expect their line managers to discuss this with them.

This investment is a recognition that Public Health Wales continues to deliver as an organisation, and it is a huge credit to you all.

Cofion caredig ac aros yn ddiogel ac yn iach.
Kind regards, and stay safe and well.
Andrew