Cllr Simpson has written to Dewsbury MP, Mark Eastwood, to raise community concerns about a shortage of PPE and testing.

Cllr Simpson wrote:

‘Dear Mark

I hope you, your family and your team are keeping well at this very difficult time.

I am writing to you today as I have been in contact with one of our local care home managers who has asked me to raise the lack of coronavirus testing available for frontline workers and vulnerable people with you on their behalf.

The Manager has described to me her ‘grave concerns around the testing of residents and staff members’. Testing ‘is paramount for the service we run’, but the absence of testing is causing ‘fears for all involved in our care home’.

I have also been contacted by two NHS doctors working at separate Yorkshire hospitals on the frontline against COVID-19. At both hospitals the tests that have been made available regularly provide false negatives – meaning that numerous tests are being required for each suspected case on living patients for a near certain outcome.

Coronavirus-suspected deaths are not being tested at these hospitals; coronavirus is instead being presumed as the cause of death, as they are required to ration the inconsistent tests for patients who are still alive. Neither of those doctors have been tested for coronavirus.

Whilst other countries have implemented a comprehensive test, track and trace programme, as per World Health Organisation guidance, the UK, as yet, is failing to provide the most basic of reliable tests for its frontline workers and patients.

It is also very concerning to continue to hear about the critical shortage of PPE. The situation at Mid Yorkshire Hospitals Trust was reported yesterday on the BBC and has been raised repeatedly with the Government by Yvette Cooper MP.

Where shortages are occurring, Public Health England guidance is now informing NHS staff to re-use single use PPE, whilst doctors are being prevented from speaking about PPE publicly.

These shortages are occurring whilst manufacturers offering to make PPE have been ignored by central government and there is an absence of national strategy to rectify this. Some local authorities are accessing quantities of PPE outside of the national procurement framework, but this does not fill the fundamental issue which is left by the absence of an effective national
strategy.

I am aware that Ministers are holding regular calls each week to provide updates and take questions from Members of Parliament regarding issues and concerns in their constituencies. I would like to ask that, if you are able to, please find the time to raise local frontline workers’ concerns around: the lack of sufficient progress on testing for frontline workers; the quality of the existing UK tests themselves; the absence of community testing as part of existing strategy; offers of manufacturing PPE going unanswered; and opportunities to purchase PPE from abroad being missed.

Again, I hope you are well and look forward to hearing back from you when you are able to respond to our residents’ concerns.

Kind regards

Cllr Will Simpson’