Public Health Wales welcomes the new action being taken from Monday 14 September by Welsh Government to prevent further rises in positive coronavirus cases. These include the mandatory wearing of face coverings by people over 11 in public places, like shops, and that only six people from an extended household can meet indoors.
As children return to schools, I understand that parents will be concerned at reports of positive cases. I would urge you to follow advice from the school or local authority and only withdraw children from school when asked to do so. Social distancing measures that are in place are designed to prevent the spread of the disease beyond the ‘bubbles’ established in schools.
Again it is important that children maintain regular handwashing throughout the day, and on returning home, and parents’ help with this is vital.
Handwashing
Washing your hands regularly is one of the best ways to stop the spread of Coronavirus.
Here are links to messages we posted over the past week. Please feel free to share them.
Test Trace Protect
Welsh Government has a lot of useful material you can share to promote Test Trace Protect. You can view it all here.
Diabetic Eye Screening Wales
Diabetic Eye Screening restarts this month in clinics across Wales – you can find more information about this here.
The screening team have started some work to inform how the service will be run in a way that is COVID-safe and accessible to participants.
We are running a survey that is now available online here. Please share with your networks and particularly any groups that support people with diabetes. Further information about the restarting of other screening services will be available in the coming weeks.
Beat Flu
Launch
The Beat Flu campaign will launch this year at 10:15am on 21 September with a live Microsoft Teams event with the media attending and questions being answered by:
- Minister for Health and Social Services, Vaughan Gething
- Head of the Vaccine and Preventable Diseases Programme at Public Health Wales, Richard Roberts
- Mental Health Ward Manager and Flu Champion, Casey Keegans
Request for questions – please ask your users for questions they might have about this upcoming flu season, and some will be answered during the event.
Toolkit
I have attached this year’s Beat Flu resource. A key part of this year’s campaign will be working with our partners as key links to local or particular audiences.
We would be grateful for your help in promoting this year’s campaign to your networks on internal and external web pages, on web page resources/links lists, stakeholder emails or newsletters and on social media.
Thank you in advance for your support.
Please do let us know if you have any questions or would like help sharing materials, or if you would like to discuss the campaign further by contacting:
hannah.lindsay(at)wales.nhs.uk and jodie.phillips2(at)wales.nhs.uk
Lasting power of attorney
The Office of the Public Guardian is running a campaign to advise people on how to make a lasting power of attorney during the pandemic.
Seventy two per cent of people think your next of kin always gets the final say in treatment decisions at hospital, if you can’t make them yourself. This is untrue. Medical decisions need the specific, agreed consent of the person involved, before a next of kin can make treatment or welfare choices on someone else’s behalf.
You can visit the campaign website here.
One of its aims is to identify people and organisations who will act as ambassadors and communicate messages to their audiences. Please share if you feel you have audiences who would benefit from understanding how to make a lasting power of attorney.
