Surely the medical experts should decide the frequency for changing PPE - not a bloody Health Minister.
Of course they should.....
‘The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, Royal College of Nursing and Royal College of Midwives have played a lead role in developing the guidance with member organisations providing practical input into the advice.
Professor Carrie MacEwen, Chair, Academy of Medical Royal Colleges said:
This is the combined result of experts in infection control working with front ine clinicians to provide the best guidance on the protection and safety of all healthcare staff, in any circumstances, based on scientific evidence; while taking into account the real-life clinical circumstances faced by staff and the concerns they have raised about their own, and their patients safety’
If ministers etc were saying ‘we aren’t paying for this’ or were refusing to do something that helped, then of course the blame would lie solely with them but in reality there will be hundreds, if not thousands of managers/admin involved to procure and distribute the equipment. It’s the same with the testing and Private Health England (PHE apparently not initially actively engaging with universities and private sector to help - was this under ministers direction or because they wanted to retain full control ? Who currently knows)
Questions can and will rightly be asked about adequate stockpiling (whether decisions were made for financial/austerity reasons etc etc) and whether supply chains were adequate or robust. no doubt ministers/Secretaries of State will ultimately carry the can, possibly rightly so, but there will also be a raft of people underneath that may or may not have done their jobs properly.
That’s not a defence of governments in general that’s just the real world.
