Coronavirus: NHS needs PPE equipment NOW before doctors die – The Yorkshire Post says

THE NHS has long been heralded as the best healthcare system in the world and The Yorkshire Post’s admiration for it was enhanced tenfold yesterday as we learned it had identified 1.5m people most at risk from coronavirus and had scrambled a mercy-dash to save their lives.
By YP Comment
Published 22nd Mar 2020, 16:45 BST
Updated 22nd Mar 2020, 18:52 BST
Wembley Arch is illuminated in blue to show its appreciation to the NHS amid the coronavirus outbreak in London, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered pubs and restaurants across the country to close tonight as the Government announced unprecedented measures to cover the wages of workers who would otherwise lose their jobs due to the coronavirus outbreak.Wembley Arch is illuminated in blue to show its appreciation to the NHS amid the coronavirus outbreak in London, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered pubs and restaurants across the country to close tonight as the Government announced unprecedented measures to cover the wages of workers who would otherwise lose their jobs due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Wembley Arch is illuminated in blue to show its appreciation to the NHS amid the coronavirus outbreak in London, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered pubs and restaurants across the country to close tonight as the Government announced unprecedented measures to cover the wages of workers who would otherwise lose their jobs due to the coronavirus outbreak.
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It is, therefore, scandalous that so many key medical staff still do not have access to proper personal protection equipment. And when Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said that people need to realise it “isn’t a game” after reports of crowds congregating in parks, and so on, those same three words also apply when it comes to protecting NHS staff and others on the Covid-19 frontline.

As a newspaper which has long campaiged to ‘protect the protectors’, it is disturbing that the sourcing and supply of so-called PPE equipment to hospitals, care homes and community workers supporting, for example, the homeless, is still a work in progress as 4,000 workers issue a SOS appeal for help. Why wait for production overseas, as Mr Jenrick implied? Get manufacturers here on the case.

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NHS staff and carers have issued a desperate appeal for more PPE equipment.NHS staff and carers have issued a desperate appeal for more PPE equipment.
NHS staff and carers have issued a desperate appeal for more PPE equipment.

Like the testing of NHS staff for coronavirus, it needs to be accelerated as a national priority – these, after all, are the health professionals already working round the clock, and risking their own health, to care for the very ill. And if they, too, are suddenly struck down with the virus, it will, sadly, compromise the heroic work of the NHS at this most critical time.

As Dr Rinesh Parmar, chair of the Doctors Association, said: “We have had doctors tell us they feel like lambs to the slaughter, that they feel like cannon fodder. GPs tell us that they feel absolutely abandoned.”

Profound words that have prompted this newspaper to change its masthead to blue to symbolise our solidarity with the NHS on behalf of the whole county, Ministers must now act – lives will be depending on their actions.

Related topics:NHSYorkshire PostCoronavirusRobert JenrickPPECovid-19

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