THREAD: The Government’s failure to protect #NHS staff with proper PPE and implement staff testing for #COVID19 has put vulnerable patients at even greater risk.
These are the reasons:
1. Thousands of staff are self-isolating, including upto a quarter of all doctors

2. Failure to test staff means that large numbers of these staff remain self-isolated when they don’t have #COVID19 infection. Negative test is not perfect, but most could return to work by risk assessing

3. Lack of staffing due to self-isolation means than non-acute physicians like oncologists, neurologists, dermatologists, rheumatologists etc are being brought on to frontline rotas, whilst still trying to run their outpatient services

4. Lack of PPE and inadequate PPE is putting staff at risk. Some will get infected and go off work, some may remain well and asymptomatic and continue working - putting other staff and patients at risk

5. This could potentially affect vulnerable patients with cancer, and other chronic illnesses, that are generally managed in the outpatient setting.

6. We are doing our very best to minimise risk to patients, but when non-acute physicians are put on the frontline, there is an inevitable knock effect on the other services they provide, both in terms of capacity to see patients and increasing infection rates

7. On an individual level, I think the risks of increasing transmission of infection are quite low, but when this is happening up and down the country, there is clearly going to be a multiplier effect

8. This could have been mitigated with a much more organised, planned and rapid response from Government. They have let #NHS staff, patients, their relatives and the public down. Other countries like Germany have done it. Why not us?