Greater Manchester police (GMP) is the latest organisation to warn that it would not answer Freedom of Information (FOI) requests during the coronavirus outbreak, after the Local Government Association (LGA) argued councils should not have to comply with FOI regulation mid-crisis.
On Monday the LGA, which represents councils in England and Wales, said the government should temporarily “relax” the requirements on councils regarding GDPR data protection regulations and FOI.
GMP put out a message on Monday saying:
As part of Greater Manchester Police resilience and contingency planning, police staff in non-critical roles are being reallocated to support operational policing.
Therefore until further notice the Freedom of Information Act support office will be suspended.
We appreciate the support of the media in keeping the backlog of requests to a minimum by ceasing new requests during this time.
The Methodist church is closing all its church buildings for the foreseeable future.
The only exception will be for churches offering services such as food banks, soup kitchens and night shelters, but these must be carried out closely within government guidelines.
The church suspended services last week with some churches still opening for quiet prayer and reflection. “This must now also be suspended,” it said.
The move comes a day after the Anglican bishops of London, Southwark, Chelmsford and Rochester ordered the closure of church buildings in the capital, which until this weekend were open for private prayer and reflection.
“In doing this we demonstrate how important physical distancing is in saving lives,” they said in a statement.
A consultant from an NHS hospital within the M25 (he did not want his hospital named) told the Guardian that his hospital was coping at present but he was anticipating a “proper crisis” by Saturday.
While hospitals are increasing bed numbers and ventilators are on the way, he said staffing was key and so personal protective equipment (PPE) for NHS staff and testing was vital. He said:
They keep downgrading the [PPE] specifications in view of the shortages. There’s a real fear among non-frontline staff that they’re just being sold a dummy. The places where they have been most successful in containing spread among healthcare workers they have been much more aggressive with the PPE (giving it to all healthcare workers). The doctors are seeing other vulnerable patients without Covid. If they’re asymptomatic and seeing patients, it’s the perfect medium to spread Covid.
He said one department at his hospital ordered alcoholic hand gel but only got a tenth of the amount they had requested. He said trusts were largely doing what they could but added:
The feeling is the government is putting healthcare workers at risk because of the inefficiency of planning. You’re putting staff in an environment where they feel unsafe to work. You’re putting patients at risk and staff at risk. NHS staff are treating Covid patients and non-Covid patients sequentially all the time.
The consultant said that by distributing the correct spec PPE among all healthcare workers, countries like Singapore and South Korea had reduced spread. By contrast, he said:
In Italy the frontline medical workers had an eight times Covid risk than the general public. I haven’t seen anyone spraying the front of my hospital [with disinfectant] like we see in Korea.
On testing, he said:
What you want to do is test early. Then, if they test positive, for all intents and purposes they’re likely to be immune (when they recover). If they don’t have Covid they can work. If they do have Covid, they can self-isolate.
A lot of healthcare workers are in relationships with other healthcare workers. Children have fevers or coughs all the time, if you lose staff for 14 days every time they have a fever or cough or have contact (with someone with symptoms or who has tested positive) that is a problem. We’ve got to test the medical staff and potentially even test their contacts.
The crux of this is having enough doctors and nurses and ventilators. We are in week four of a crisis. In four of five weeks I am probably going to have everyone self-isolating (in my team).
Six ambulances have had their tyres deliberately punctured in Kent, in what must be one of the more depressing acts of mindlessness during the outbreak.
The South East Coast ambulance service said the vehicles were targeted overnight in Thanet, adding the strain of its staff, who were already under “significant pressure”.
The MP Tracey Crouch described whoever did it as “an utter scroat”:
Tracey Crouch
(@tracey_crouch)6 ambulances had their tyres punctured last night. I know MPs are supposed to be polite etc but whoever did this is an utter scroat. Just what goes through the mind of someone who does this, nevermind during a pandemic? Thanks to the team for getting them back on the road ASAP https://t.co/tl5CTPk7wr
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