Don’t visit GP – they’ll call you back to check you’re ill

PATIENTS who make a GP appointment online may be phoned back to check that they do not have coronavirus before they come in.

NHS officials have told doctors to take the utmost precautions to ensure patients do not unwittingly arrive at surgeries with the illness.

They have instructed GPs to carry out a telephone or Skype assessment of anyone who has booked an appointment online. This is in case they wish to see their doctor because of a sore throat, temperature or cough, the typical symptoms of coronavirus.

Often patients who book an online appointment do not need to disclose their reasons, unlike those who ring up and speak to a receptionist. The advice was issued by NHS England to practices on Thursday night to ‘mitigate any risk that potentially infected patients book appointments online and attend the practice’.

At least 20 GP surgeries have been forced to close for deep cleans in the past month after patients with suspected coronavirus walked into waiting rooms.

This is contrary to official advice that says anyone who is worried

they might have the illness should ring NHS 111 and await a test.

The latest closures involve practices in Essex, Derbyshire, Wiltshire, Liverpool and Hampshire, according to Pulse magazine.

Doctors are also being urged not to encourage patients to stockpile their medication by switching to long prescription durations.

The new advice says: ‘These actions may put a strain on the supply chain and exacerbate any potential shortages.’ It comes as the NHS prepares to double the number of coronavirus tests that can be carried out in a day.

The health service currently has the capacity to do 2,000 tests a day and they are analysed in one of 12 labs across the country.

But this will rise to 4,000 in the coming days as laboratories in NHS hospitals are authorised to do the checks. They will include home tests, drive-through tests – where patients are swabbed by a nurse without leaving a car – and tests in pods outside A&E units.

But if an epidemic takes hold, the NHS will have to give up on testing all possible cases as there could be several thousand a day.

Patients and doctors would instead be told to use a ‘clinical definition’ to diagnose coronavirus based on the symptoms of a cough, sore throat, temperature and shortness of breath.