Agenda item
Information Report - Joint working with Public Health to control Covid-19 outbreaks in work settings
Minutes:
Members received an Information Report on the joint working with Public Health to control Covid-19 outbreaks in work settings.
The Community Environmental Health and Trading Standards Manager introduced the report and in doing so, stated that as Members were aware COVID-19 posed a serious and imminent risk to public health and had been declared a global pandemic. On 5th March 2020 the first death from coronavirus in the UK was confirmed.
Local Authorities, with key NHS partners, worked alongside Public Health England (PHE) on the reactive response to outbreaks, following the usual arrangements in place for any outbreak situation.
National contact tracers followed up most non-complex, routine positive cases and their contacts and would escalate any complex cases, clusters and outbreaks to the West Midlands Public Health England team, who worked with the Local Authority to rapidly prevent and control transmission.
WRS Environmental Health expertise and resources were focussed on outbreak investigation, proactive advice and enforcement to supplement the National contact tracing programme. This was a key role in effective disease control and prevention and WRS officers had the essential experience, professional and legislative tools required to manage and control any outbreaks that occurred.
The report also contained information on the 3 outbreak investigations and the responses that WRS has delivered. 70 Covid-19 related service requests had been dealt with in the last week and the total number of requests for advice and investigations into non-compliance had crept up to 1600 in Worcestershire.
In addition to this officers had had to keep up with an unprecedented amount of legislation and amendments.
Officers had also worked with colleagues at West Mercia Police and had secured the closure and penalty fines in relation to a public house in Redditch that had carried on operating as a nightclub.
Officers were also working with colleagues in Public Health looking at the issue of local contact tracing arrangements, where national contact tracing has not been successful.
Councillor J. Raine, Malvern Hills District Council, highlighted that is was a most important report and Members should take the opportunity to recognise how hard WRS officers had been working in supporting Public Health colleagues as well as carrying out their normal workload. He expressed his thanks to all WRS officers.
Councillor E. Stokes, Wychavon District Council, commented that she was happy to endorse Councillor Raine’s thanks and agreed that is was an amazing report.
In response to Councillor Stokes with regard to the £168k to be drawn down from WCC, the Head of Regulatory Services informed the Board that the calculation of the full costs were for the 3 officers working as part of the Covid-19 direct response.
A lot of the work that the Community Environmental Health and Trading Standards Managerreferred to was work that WRS was delivering because Council’s collectively across the country had been designated by the Secretary of State, as the enforcement arm for all of the new regulations that were coming in, in particular business controls; none of which was funded. The £168k to be received from WCC was purely for local outbreak response teams. All of the other duties that government had dropped on WRS, to regulate the local economy, were having to done currently from within the WRS existing budget.
Senior officers were looking at what WRS needed going forward to bring that extra resource in and he had primed the Chief Executives / Managing Directors across all partner authorities.
The Chairman took the opportunity to echo everything that Members had said and stated that all Members were of the brilliant job that WRS officers were doing.
RESOLVED that the Information Report – Joint working with Public Health to control Covid-19 outbreaks in work settings, be noted; and that Board Members use the contents of the report in their own reporting back to fellow Members of each partner authority.
Supporting documents:
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