Can I ask a question on PPE - maybe Bren 2K could answer this - if you are carer who travels from house to house to support those who cannot look after themselves do you need a fresh set of PPE for every visit?

You most certainly do.

How do they converse with the patients if they are in full gear - surely it must be near impossible to bath someone in full gear?

Would we not better moving these vulnerable people into a controlled environment where they can looked after more efficiently and the PPE can be used more efficiently i.e. one set last 12 hours not 12 minutes?

Is Boris still doing puzzles?

This is everything that's up with politics. It always comes back to Labour. 'Would Labour have done any better?', 'Imagine if Labour were in charge'. Steph, they've not been in power for 10 years, this has nothing to do with Labour or Corbyn. Nobody knows how they would have done.

Got to love these die hard Tories who think their party can do no wrong.

They've been abysmal in their handling of this pandemic throughout.

Did the Government state that by the end of April they will be doing 100,000 tests per day or that they have the capacity to be able to do 100,000 tests. If the latter then it’s easy to say we can do 100,000 because they are currently unable to reach their current capacity.

Under normal circumstances, full PPE would not be needed for most home care visits; just gloves and maybe an apron. Masks and other precautions are being used now, so that visiting carers don't pass on the virus to extremely vulnerable people. It is by the way, perfectly easy to converse with someone whilst wearing a mask - it's not a diving helmet - just a fabric mask with a non-permeable insert.

There is no 'controlled environment' in which to place people - and even if there were, you would be hard pressed from a legal perspective to force someone who had full capacity to move from their home into a more risky group setting. And even if you did force them, at great expense btw, it doesn't solve the PPE issue - contrary to the latest Govt advice, PPE should be changed after every interaction, so unless you had one carer supporting one person for the whole shift - which doesn't happen - they'd have to change their PPE as the worked between clients. And even then - in the 1 carer to 1 client situ - they would still need new PPE when they transitioned from say personal care, to preparing food.

I can see where you're coming from with this, but I can assure you that as private providers, we have a baked in motivation to ensure our staff don't over-use PPE; you will understand why. I can assure you that they don't - and they aren't now.

I wasn't for one minute suggesting otherwise - but in ICU they deal with several patients but don't change their PPE especially the senior clinical staff. It was just a suggestion for a short term solution to the PPE issue - it seems we have Nightingales everywhere with huge amounts of empty beds and no doubt staff with little to do. Perhaps a more controlled environment would protect the vulnerable - but I get your point.

The staff are assigned to particular patients (I was under the impression something like 1 nurse per 2 patients if possible currently?). As the patients already have the virus I'll guess (and it is that) that they're not as much worried about transmitting from person to person in ICU.
However, centralising multiple people in 1 location, and 1 of them having the virus but you dont know, then going working with another person in that environment using the same PPE wouldn't be a great idea? Although centralising all the people who require care in one location and it spreading like wild fire wouldn't wither I would have thought?
They also change their PPE kit after each session and if they have a break after say 4hrs they remove all that kit, then put new kit back on before going back in?

I see you mention nightingale beds and staff with nothing to do, where is that info from?

And back onto the PPE subject, I do wonder how some hospitals who are coping with staff shortages, would have coped for PPE if those nurses/doctors had been available to work. I guess theyd have needed more?

Thank you for that - now it makes more sense - you can see why we are going through PPE at such a rapid rate

The BBC shared a PPE update from United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust yesterday -

Let's hope those masks do arrive today
Hows the rest of the country?

One trust said they were using 70,000 items of PPE a day that simply get incinerated - wow it that really the best use of the earth's resources?