County’s new rapid Covid testing is held up by major logistical issues
‘REQUEST FOR ARMY HELP IS STILL TO BE ANSWERED’
A REQUEST has been made to bring in the Army to help in the fight against coronavirus in Staffordshire.
Staffordshire County Council has asked for assistance from the military as it looks at how a mass vaccination programme could be delivered.
It comes as the county has already been chosen as one of 66 areas to roll out rapid- turnaround Covid-19 lateral flow tests, which can give results in less than an hour without the need for laboratory processing.
But at Tuesday’s corporate review committee, members heard the council was facing challenges in getting the tests to residents. Discussions are continuing about training volunteers to carry out the swabs.
Council leader Alan White said: “We thought lateral flow testing would be coming in this week but it’s not going to be this week because of various logistical issues.”
Dr Richard Harling, the council’s director of health and care, said: “These are new patient tests which provide an opportunity to identify cases and their contacts more quickly.
“If we can get them rolled out at scale it is likely to have some impact on the spread of infection, although we do need to manage expectations as the virus is not going to disappear suddenly overnight because of an introduction of these tests.
“We expect to have them available at scale – the Government has indicated a supply of up to 10 per cent of the population a week.
“The main constraint is they require a trained operator and there is no associated funding for people to do the tests. We are going to have to think imaginatively about how we get a workforce to provide the tests.
“We have had a conversation with the district and borough councils.
“We envisage using these tests in a range of settings; for example, for public sector partners, where we would need their own occupational health departments to provide the trained operators; to large employers – we would look to them to provide the workforce; and then to look to deploy them in communities with the highest rates of infection.
“In that scenario I think we would need to use volunteers and we have initiated conversations with councils about how we mobilise a volunteer workforce.”
Councillor Ian Parry asked what the authority’s role would be in delivering Covid-19 vaccinations when they were available. “I’m wondering whether there has been any thought at the county on trying to now, as soon as possible, build some capacity however it can be done; whether training volunteers or bringing in the Army as they have done in the testing regime or some other means. “Clearly this is going to fall flat if we don’t have the capacity to deliver.”
Councillor White said: “We have submitted a number of requests for military assistance. We have 11 Signals Brigade based in Stafford and the Defence Medical Services based in Whittington.
“Those requests have not come back with a positive response. We have also flagged up to the Covid-19 representative from the Cabinet Office, who is also a military officer, to say we have been making these requests and could you do what you can to help.
“While those requests have so far fallen on deaf ears, we will continue to make them and hopefully we will get some support.”
“Each NHS area has been asked to begin planning and preparations to deploy the vaccine when it becomes available. They are likely to look to use mainly existing NHS resources.”
Dr Harling said: “We have been involved in those discussions and we are reasonably confident that the logistics are coming into place – there is still work to do.
“I think the main constraint will be the speed at which supplies of the vaccination can come through the pipeline.”
These are new patient tests which help identify cases and their contacts more quickly.
Dr Richard Harling