Doctors in Unite believe that comprehensive, publicly coordinated and community based, ‘test, trace, isolate and support’ procedures are vital for control of the Covid 19 pandemic as lockdown is eased. As a means to eliminating Covid-19 from our communities, people must be supported to isolate once they are identified as potentially infectious. To this end […]
Category: Transmission
We believe easing of the lockdown, and the active encouragement to return to work, is premature and unsafe given the high rate of ongoing infection1, that the R0 value is very close to, and in some areas is above 1 and the test, trace and isolate system is months away from being properly functioning. In […]
June 1 2020 heralded the official start of the easing of the lockdown that has been in place since 23rd March to try to contain the spread of Covid 19. The current reality is that due to the Westminster Government’s repeatedly vague and confusing messaging, compounded by their unwavering support of the Prime Minister’s rule […]
On the 7th May, Doctors in Unite expressed its full support for the National Education Union’s five tests before schools could take in more children and colleges re-open. In brief, these tests were: Far lower numbers of COVID-19 cases A national plan for social distancing Testing, testing, testing Whole school strategy for testing in the […]
Doctors in Unite believe that comprehensive, publicly coordinated and community based ‘isolate, trace and support’ procedures are vital for control of the COVID-19 pandemic as lockdown is eased. To keep the frequency of new cases in the community manageable people must be supported to self isolate once they are identified as potentially infectious. To this end […]
As a paediatrician, I share the grave concerns of nurse Ian Wilson who has two children at school in Lewisham and experience of working with covid-19 infected patients. In an open letter to Health Secretary Matt Hancock last week, he pleaded that we were not enrolled against our will in a giant experiment that could […]
Since the start of the lockdown we have called for contact tracing and widespread testing as the only means to establish the true prevalence of COVID-19. This is what the World Health Organisation urged all countries to do from the very beginning. We welcome Matt Hancock’s announcement of testing for symptomatic key workers and their […]
It is not possible to undertake any meaningful planning for an exit strategy from the current lockdown without an understanding of COVID-19’s prevalence and our current levels of immunity. On April 2nd Health Secretary Matt Hancock promised to test 100,000 people daily by the end of the month. On that same day the UK was testing ten times […]
As the number of cases of COVID-19 in the UK continues to rise it has become increasingly clear that there is a dire shortage of appropriate PPE for health and social care workers. There have been repeated assurances from the government that there is plenty of appropriate PPE. However it is widely reported from the […]
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COVID-19: A GP’s Perspective
As I write we are at the beginning of the pandemic in the UK. We still have relatively small numbers of cases but they are steadily increasing along with, tragically, associated deaths. There is a very fine line between not fuelling mass panic, which is unhelpful, but also in taking sensible precautions. Public health messages […]
Doctors in Unite 