Ealing Covid-19 Latest Update

Eric Leach highlights possible new spike in cases locally

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Ealing Care Home With 27 Covid-19 Deaths Admits Possible New Spike in Cases

The manager of the unnamed Ealing care home with the 27 Covid-19 deaths was quoted in ‘The Guardian’ of 19 May 2020 saying that after two weeks of no new cases, 8 out of the 22 people living in one of its units tested positive. There were two new or worsening care home outbreaks over the past 24 hours. Five residents have been hospitalised in the past few days. Dr Anna Down of The Argyle Surgery in West Ealing, the clinical GP lead for the 1,000 residents in the 15 care homes, said ‘the unit looked like it had escaped but clearly it hasn’t’.

Some Ealing Parks Car Parks and Public Golf Courses Re-Open

Car parks at Northala Fields, Brent Lodge Park, Pitshanger Park, Ealing Central Sports Field and Berkeley Field (for Horsenden Hill) have all re-opened. Perivale and Brent Valley golf courses have also re-opened, and public rights of way for walkers are still in place. Gunnersbury Park car park, museum, café, playground, tennis courts and public toilets remain closed. Osterley Park is open but the car park, house, shops and garden remain closed. The toilets are open from 10am to 5pm.

Chemists Who will Deliver Prescription Drugs

For a list of names, addresses and phone numbers see here.

West London Councils Collectively Purchase 48 Million PPE Items

Barnet, Brent, Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham, Hillingdon and Hounslow Councils have collectively purchased 48 million items of PPE. Already 10 million PPE items have been delivered to social care workers.

Ealing Food Bank

For details on referrals for food and for how to donate food see the website. Email: info@ealing.foodbank.org.uk Telephone: 020 8840 9428 and 07769 759756

North Acton Picked Out by TfL As a Busy Covid-19 Dangerous Tube Station

Transport for London (TfL) is telling commuters to avoid using North Acton tube station 5:45am to 8:15am and 4pm to 5:30pm. TfL regards the other 13 Ealing tube stations not to be Covid-19 dangerous at rush hour. TfL claims 75% of its tube trains, 85% of buses and 80% of over-ground trains are now operational. Mayor Khan is quoted as saying we should only use public transport ‘as a last resort’.

Greenford Hall Becomes a Temporary Food Hub

Some 500 families throughout Ealing are receiving food assembled, packed and delivered from Greenford Hall, Ruislip Road, Greenford, UB6 9QN. This is a great undertaking by a large group of organisations working together. They include:

Ealing Council’s ‘Ealing Together’ initiative, The Grove Communities, Gurnell Grove group, The Felix Project, Ealing Community Transport, The Four One out of Four project, Havelock Primary and Nursery, Golden Opportunity, Skills and Development, EASE and Home-Start Ealing.

Food donations can be delivered to the hall between 10am and 1 pm on Tuesday and Fridays. Preferred foods are tinned beans, tinned and fresh fruit, rice, pasta, potatoes, carrots, onions, eggs, toilet rolls and personal hygiene products. Also useful would be bags for life, boxes and crates. More here. 020 8825 7170

Ealing Hospital

Since 2014 Ealing Hospital has been run remotely by what is now called London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust (LNWH). LNWH’s current Chief Executive is a recent interim hire for 12 months. He’s a called Chris Bown and he’s based in Harrow. LNWH’s Chair is part time. He’s Sir Amyas Morse and his office is in Hillingdon. Covid-19 brought about surgery being abandoned at Ealing Hospital and most Intensive Care Unit beds and consultants being moved - for Covid-19 use - to Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow. We know from hospital staff that Ealing’s role has been to handle many less serious Covid-19 patients.

On the LNWH web site is an extraordinary open letter about what’s going on. In the 1,200 word epistle Ealing Hospital is not mentioned at all. Messrs Bown and Morse have signed their names to it.

Prior to Covid-19 LNWH has regularly run Board meetings in public for over five years. The last one took place in January 2020 and no further meetings (virtual/online) are scheduled, except one scheduled for 27 May 2020 but no-one believes it will take place. No meeting papers have been posted on the LNWH web site. Ealing Save Our NHS (ESON) has been told an online Board meeting will take place ‘sometime in June 2020’. Other London NHS Trust Boards have been meeting online (Imperial College’s Trust Board meets on 20 May 2020). For many months now ESON has been

asking NHS bosses for details of the future plan for Ealing Hospital. Covid-19, changes in NHS bosses, and new plans for NHS London have proved convenient excuses for ducking this question.

Ealing Clinical Commissioning Group (ECCG)

ECCG is the statutory body for commissioning (i.e. purchasing) all healthcare services in Ealing. In annual staff costs alone it’s a £10 million operation. Its Governing Body has met regularly in public for seven years. However it hasn’t met in public (or at all?) since January 2020. There are no public plans for it to meet at all in the future – even virtually online using Zoom, Skype or MS Teams. When I questioned this in a message to the ECCG web site someone in ‘Corporate Governance’ at the NHS North West London Collaboration of Clinical Commissioning Groups stated ‘CCGs are focused on responding to the Covid-19 pandemic’. I immediately queried this – pointing out that Ealing Council were meeting online. However her robot reply informed me she was ‘currently on leave’.

When Will the Government’s Test/Trace/Isolate Project Start Up in Ealing?

‘Mid-May 2020’ was the Government’s early prediction for it to re-start testing/tracing (abandoned on 12 March 2020). Now June 2020 is being hinted at. Rumours abound that the NHSX sponsored Smartphone App trials in the Isle of Wight aren’t going that well. There are some murmurs of either adopting the Apple/Google App or doing without using a Smartphone App at all. As for the Apple/Google App it was formally released on 20 May 2020, with 22 countries planning to adopt it.

Press reports tell us 25,000 people have been signed up and are being trained (on £10/hour). Private companies involved include Serco, Sitel and recruiter HR Go. Public Health England and the DHSC are clearly heavily involved. Ealing Council has made no statement as to its involvement in the Covid-19 test/trace/isolate project.

Covid-19 Overwhelming Mental Health Services in Ealing

In recent years more and more mental health suffers in Ealing have been discharged from the Secondary Mental Health sector to the Primary Care sector. Put even more simple they come off the books of West London NHS Trust and go onto the books of one of Ealing’s 200 GPs. The rationale around this is similar to that around discharging patients with physical health problems as quickly as possible from Ealing Hospital into the ‘community’ (i.e. into a residential home or back home with visiting care staff). It’s all about cost and available resources. Secondary Mental Health care is expensive and there are too few psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health nurses and support staff.

If you are Sectioned under the Mental Health Act, there is nowhere now in Ealing for you to be detained. Ealing has over 420,000 patients registered at 75 GP practices across 21 square miles. In fact with the recent closures of Hope and Horizon Wards at St Bernard’s Hospital in Southall, there’s nowhere in Ealing to receive residential Secondary Mental Health care.

Just where in Ealing are seriously Covid-19 infected mental health patients being treated? It’s probably in the Avonmore Ward in the Hammersmith & Fulham Health Unit close by Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith. It was adapted for Covid-19 mental health patients just three days before the Covid-19 national lockdown began in March 2020.

Our local Mental Health Trust, West London NHS Trust, based in Southall, has reported sharply increased mental health ‘Unexpected Death‘ rates in Ealing, Hounslow, Hammersmith and Fulham for April 2020. At 50 it is significantly higher than the average monthly figure of 17 for the previous 11 months.

Covid-19 has legitimised fewer face-to-face triage, diagnoses and treatments. It is providing a launch pad for post Covid-19 virtual on line consultations and email/telephone working. This is not just speculation it’s documented in a leaked 29 April 2020 email from NHS London supremo Sir David Sloman to the five NHS London Integrated Care System bosses. He asks them to comment (giving them just 12 days notice) on his 18 month plan for post covid-19 care services in London. As is par for the course in integrated care messages from on high, this 1,200 word missive mentions mental health just once.

Eric Leach

eric.alan.leach@gmail.com

21 May 2020

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