Rapid response will be key to preventing a second coronavirus spike in Peterborough

The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Health and Wellbeing Board has met as part of the National Test and Trace scheme to help prevent a second spike of the coronavirus.

The  online meeting was called (Monday) to review the region’s Local Outbreak Control Plan and discuss measures in place to tackle any further outbreaks of the virus.

Dr Liz Robin, Director of Public Health for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough told the meeting: “It is absolutely critical that we get this right.

“The Local Outbreak Control Plan describes the work that we will deliver locally as our part of the national Test and Trace model.

“We have to get the processes in place to identify and manage local outbreaks of Covid-19 as part of the gradual relaxation of lock-down. Test and Trace and local outbreak plans are necessary to move us back towards our ‘new normal’, but they are not sufficient alone.

“We need to continue to observe the social distancing and hygiene measures that the government is asking us to do.

“Our Local Outbreak Control Plan is due for submission to national government (30 June), and we’ve been allocated approximately £3.5m across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to deliver it.

“One of the principles of our Local Outbreak Control Plan is that it should build on existing local systems to protect health and manage outbreaks of infectious disease.

“To do that, we work across the entire Public Health England team – which is regional for the East of England – including local authority public health teams, environmental health officers and others.

“We have strong local systems already in place, recognised by government that are used to manage Tuberculosis, Norovirus, Meningitis and all sorts of other outbreaks of infectious diseases and we can build upon these to manage COVID-19.

“Work on our Local Outbreak Control Plan started on 22 May, bringing together a multi-agency group who identified the work that needed to be done in order to delivery effective surveillance and control of local outbreaks of COVID-19.

“This is very real it’s very serious – we all know that – we must make this work in practice”.

Cllr Linda Jones (Labour, Cambridge City Council) asked: “Are we confident that our testing processes are capable of coping with the needs should there be a second spike and how quickly are we able to react to a local outbreak of Covid-19 as these are critical elements in defeating the virus?”.

Dr Robin replied: “Timely reporting to combat the virus is critical and we’re very aware that speed is of the essence having watched the infection rates grow very quickly in the earlier phases of the pandemic before lockdown.

“The Test and Trace system reports rapidly through to the Public Health England team using a single email address and a single reporting phone number.

“Everyday surveillance meetings are held with the Clinical Commissioning Group, the Local Authority and Public Health Business Intelligence Teams who then analyse that data giving us a very good early warning system of any potential local outbreak.

“As an example, if a report comes through of an outbreak in a care home and they call Public Health England to report it, that information is passed immediately to a specific ‘care home cell’ to deal with that outbreak and the same is true of a workplace or a school.

“In terms of testing capacity, we have more than is needed because we’re at a low level of Covid-19 in the population at the moment.

“This is a good thing because if we see a second spike of COVID-19 in the population then we’ll need that additional testing capacity so its good to know it’s there.

“The concern locally is whether we can get the tests done in the right place at the right time to get the results turned around quickly. But just to reassure the public, results are now getting turned around much more quickly both at a national and local level than in the past, so that 24-72 hours is commonplace and it’s improving all the time. Locally we can get tests turned around within 24 hours.

“Large parts of our region are rural; people may not have easy access to a car or public transport or even to the internet. The plan identifies these issues and because of that we have teams ready to react rapidly to rural needs should there be a breakout.

“The best rapid local testing capacity at the moment is in two places: the service commissioned by the CCG which can out very rapidly to outbreaks in care homes, prisons or homeless hostels sending tests to local labs and get them turned around very quickly.

“The other thing that can be done when perhaps more swabs are needed are the military-led mobile units which can be rapidly brought into action within 24-48 hours’ notice of an outbreak.”

The members unanimously voted to approve the Local Outbreak Control Plan, with Dr Robin and her team acknowledging the input and questions received from the Board.

The draft version of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Local Outbreak Control Plan was put to central government for approval on  June 30.
Once approved, the final version will be made available to the public.