Fifth of front-line staff have taken time off work without being tested time off work without being tested

UP TO a fifth of front-line health staff have been forced to take time off work to self-isolate during the outbreak, the head of the Royal College of Nursing has disclosed.

Dame Donna Kinnair, chief executive of the RCN, said nurses have had to stay at home as part of guidance on how to reduce the spread of the virus, and were eager to be tested so they could be cleared to continue their jobs.

Her intervention came as the Government faces intensifying pressure to screen NHS front-line workers for Covid-19, with Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, refusing to name a date when staff will receive testing.

Speaking on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme yesterday, Dame Kinnair said: “Last week, it was about 20 per cent of nurses, or frontline workers, who were [self-isolating].

I don’t know the exact proportion of nurses in that, 20 per cent to 25 per cent, so there are a number of nurses who would like to be tested to get on with their job if they are not positive for Covid-19.”

Dr Katherine Henderson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, also said that hospitals were scrambling to adapt rotas to cover staff absences. She told The Andrew Marr Show: on BBC One: “People are talking about 20 per cent and all of us have been doing staff plans working on the basis that 10, 20, 30 per cent of staff could be off at any one time, and adapting rotas to make it possible to staff units.”

She also warned that the supply of personal protective equipment in hospitals had proved a problem.

“The best thing that is going to happen is there’s going to be some new guidance coming out in the next couple of days, which I think will relieve a lot of people’s anxieties,” she said. “We

need to make sure frontline healthcare workers, social care, GPS, have the appropriate kit they need to see patients.”

The Government has been widely criticised for its perceived failure to adequately test NHS staff, many of whom have been forced to self-isolate, even though they may be healthy, because someone they live with has displayed symptoms of the infection.

Mr Gove declared that tests for frontline NHS workers were being trialled over the weekend, before an expected roll-out. But he came under fire from NHS staff after failing to specify when health and social care staff would be tested for the virus.

He told Sky News: “I hope that we will be able to test as many front-line workers at the earliest possible stage.”

Announcing the new tests for frontline workers, Mr Gove said: “This will be antigen testing – testing whether people currently have the disease – so that our health and social care workers can have security in the knowledge

‘We need to make sure frontline healthcare workers have the appropriate kit they need’

‘Tests will mean our health and social care workers are safe to work if their result is negative’

that they are safe to return to work if their test is negative.”

Self-isolation rules have resulted in some wards having as many as one in three doctors and nurses unable to work. The rules state those living alone who have symptoms of the virus should stay at home for seven days from the day they first started experiencing them.

Those who live with others are being instructed to stay home for 14 days, along with those in their household.