{"id":2924,"date":"2020-03-24T09:38:52","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T08:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/?page_id=2924"},"modified":"2020-03-24T09:38:53","modified_gmt":"2020-03-24T08:38:53","slug":"covid-19-letter-to-north-of-tyne-combined-authority-23-march-2020","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/?page_id=2924","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 &#8211; letter to North of Tyne Combined Authority, 23 March 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>COVID-19 \u2013 local contact\ntracing and case finding measures in the North-East<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\npurpose of this letter is to urge you as soon as possible to do everything you\ncan to make the case with your local authority colleagues and Public Health\nEngland to institute an immediate and meticulous contact tracing and testing\nprogramme in each local authority within the NoTCA area, and more widely in the\nNorth East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As an academic public health\ndoctor, I was pleased to see control measures against COVID-19 being escalated\nsince Friday. One important concern remains, however, about the national and\nlocal response to managing the epidemic and it relates to contact tracing and\ncase finding. This is fundamental in the arsenal of approaches to managing\ninfectious diseases, including the current pandemic. The World Health\nOrganization has strongly urged all member countries to continue contact\ntracing, case finding and related measures after seeing demonstrable success in\nmanaging the outbreaks in China and South Korea. A recent Government paper\nclearly demonstrates through mathematical modelling that effective contact\ntracing and case finding is likely to remain a highly effective approach after\n\u201clockdown\u201d and a local approach is vital and will enable restrictions to be\nlifted following local risk assessment. Contact tracing measures were not\nincluded in the (other) mathematical model which the government used to support\nits decision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The epidemic is at very\ndifferent phases in different parts of the country. Clearly, conducting contact\ntracing and case finding thoroughly would place substantial demands on local\npublic health authorities. However, within the NoTCA area (as with many other\nareas in the UK), the three localities still have low case numbers (Newcastle\n34, North Tyneside 18, and Northumbria 10), and numbers are even lower in Gateshead\nand South Tyneside. Even at hotspots, the challenges are not insurmountable &#8211;\nour colleagues in Wuhan and Daegu showed that it is achievable with far larger\nnumbers. If Public Health England agrees, I believe we could mobilise our local\ncommunities to assemble the capacity to support local approaches. For example,\nmany junior medical and nursing and other students would only need very brief\ntraining before they can take on the necessary tasks. During the 2009 influenza\npandemic, many volunteers were recruited for the purpose. As the severity of\nthis pandemic is on a different scale from the 2009 one, the level of urgency\nfelt by the public suggests that we would have little difficulty in assembling\nthe necessary number of people to assist colleagues in local government and\npublic health authorities. I am also in discussion with public health colleagues\nin other parts of the country, including the West Midlands. You would have an\nimportant leadership role in these endeavours.&nbsp;\nWe need to act quickly as the window is narrow, given the number of\ncases is doubling every four to five days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I therefore urge you as soon\nas possible to discuss this proposal with local government authorities and PHE.\nI would be happy to support in whatever way possible. \n\nI\nwill also forward this letter to Dr Duncan Selbie, CEO of PHE; Professor Paul\nJohnstone, PHE North of England, Regional Director and Professor Peter Kelly,\nCentre Director, PHE North East. \n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>COVID-19 \u2013 local contact tracing and case finding measures in the North-East The purpose of this letter is to urge you as soon as possible to do everything you can to make the case with your local authority colleagues and Public Health England to institute an immediate and meticulous contact tracing and testing programme in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"tags":[154,153,155,45],"class_list":["post-2924","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-north-east-england","tag-public-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}