UKC

The government has just employed somebody to ensure that there is enough PPE in the NHS.

WTF

Four months, FOUR fekin months, too late

It's been more than 4 months . 

The NHS has been going for years and there's been nobody doing this job already ?????

I heard it on Radio 2 news this morning at 04-00hrs but I can't find it anywhere else to provide a link.

It relates to somebody who was responsible or had a hand in the Olympics, but I can't remember their name.

It's a formidable task. I've been exporting British-made raw materials to developing countries for the last 35 years and I had thought of sitting down and writing a timeline of how to place and get manufactured an overseas order but the frustrations and ramifications and pitfalls are so numerous and so complex that I stopped thinking about it because it hurt my brain. To expect a British government department to achieve this is expecting too much in good times, let along in the present times of shortages and delays. 

So good luck to the person they have appointed, I hope they have a good supply of Paracetamol.

A bit of a poison chalice. Bet it took them ages to find somebody who would take this on.nightmare. 

Eh, Rome wasn't built in a day  !

This is because the highly paid civil servant who was supposed to be doing this job failed. They will still get their large salary and pension and a job for life and possibly a bonus if the new hiring completes the task. Govt make the rules/laws. It is up to the civil/public servants to ensure they are carried out. A job that is rarely done efficiently.

I should say. I bet there are plenty in the world jumping on the bandwagon to produce aprons, masks etc. by any means possible. Unscrupulous.

But is it produced with child labour, are the factory workforce protected, will it pass the safety tests? 

Then the Guardian waiting to lead with "UK miss out on purchase of 50 million aprons" if they don't buy them, or "UK government purchase 50 million aprons from Bangladesh produced in sweatshop by children with no protective gear". 

Yep. Nightmare. 400,000 gowns a week is the rate of consumption For disposables. Mindboggling

bet there are made here after this has worked its way through. Even then it will not be easy to set up.

Was the civil servant in question told not to bother getting PPE in February?

The Health Secretary, said all was good, we have got it covered. So much so that we actually exported PPE to China.

If you haven't read today's damning article in the Sunday Times, I'd read it.

I've started reading the ST - despite Murdoch - over the Observer. They really do seem to have the measure of Johnson (though why Lawson is still 'contributing'  is anybody's guess.)

Someone needs to figure out how to make ones that can be safely washed/disinfected.  Doesn't seem like it should be beyond the wit of man in 2020.

You do know they use reusable ones as well.The dispoable  ones are for certain tasks where reusable ones are not correct. It’s complicated. 

I expect that two months ago this was a case of picking up the phone to manufacturers and asking (telling?) them to get together with companies with similar resources and step up output. Now that everyone is in their livingrooms, the whole thing becomes near impossible. 

Just for a bit of balance, I think we exported 220,000 items of PPE. A few things to consider  

1.  It appears this would last about a day!

2. This is a global challenge, countries sharing resources at the appropriate times, will hopefully be the best approach. If China were at their peak, they may have needed it.  Hopefully they will reciprocate the good will!!   Alternatively, we could could go for a trump approach where it’s each country for themselves. 
3.  Demand for PPE went up by 5000% basically overnight. I’m not sure how much we stocked before and how long it was intended to last in normal circumstances, but multiply that by 5000!  Good job there are global suppliers and basically a still functional supply chain. 

Yes, but when they are going through them this fast the balance between reusable and disposable needs to change.   If this virus is deactivated by soap and water it seems like it should be possible.

You say this but today a consultant at the largest ICU in Scotland said this

"9 days after sending an email to SG, still no response. We have no visors in the largest ICU in Scotland (QEUH). Staff are reusing single-use Covid contaminated visors after wiping them! Masks are running short. For the sake of my brave team, hope to get a response/solution soon"

Polycarbonate visors can almost all be washed with soapy water and then wiped over with isopropanol, this level of cleaning is easy and cheap and would be effective to implement. There are plenty of companies that could offer this service and could achieve it in a sterile way.

Surely it is not beyond the wit of people within individual hospitals to implement this particularly with 9 days warning. The army was able deliver a 4000 bed care center in that time. Surely as a manager you don't sit back and wait for a supply chain failure without planning a contingency? Risk mitigation basics, what can go wrong will, so plan accordingly. 

Those crying out that we shouldn't have exported PPE. This is what Germany did, good on them to do as they wish but it created great tension with Italy. 

We should not do the same. There are countries in this world with 1 ventilator, 4 ICU beds and almost zero PPE stocks. However bad our wonderful NHS is having it these countries will suffer many orders of magnitude more. We can chose to close our exports, maybe it will save us 10s of lives maybe 100s but it could cost 1000s abroad in countries where contracting the virus will be be a death sentence regardless of age.

"Colonial power withdraws supply of necessary medical equipment at time of international Crisis" who would honestly chose that? It would cause justified resentment.

I imagine that ICU consultants are fairly busy at the moment.  Somebody in the organisation that supplies them with kit should be thinking about collecting the used PPE and cleaning it.

Not really the army.  They build these things in conference centres using the modular systems for building stands at trade shows.  It's normal to assemble a trade show in a few days without using the army.  One of the big architect practices did the design/layout work and it almost certainly took them more than a few days.  

More like 2 armies, the military one and also a civilian army of specialists. Quite a lot of my contacts on linked in have been involved, electricians, generator specialists, pipe fitters, shop fitters, compressed Air and vacuum specialists, project managers. Some paid and some giving their time and company resources FOC. 

Edited to add, there is also an army of companies that have re purposed and are making ppe as fast as they can, a lot of this hasn't been government lead though, its business owners looking at their facilities and doing what they can mostly in their local area. 

Hopefully the new guy can consolidate all this effort and get the stuff yo where it is needed the most. 

In all fairness, if 8 weeks ago someone had said the government had 10 zillion pounds worth of PPE in case of a Pandemic, I doubt it would have gone down well. Do you suggest they order 3000 snow ploughs just in case we have 3 days of snow next December?

Or possibly because we've fractured the NHS into trusts with their own procurement mechanisms, in order to drive efficiency through market competition instead of through economies of scale, and rather than admit that a national public service requires national leadership and co-ordination we were hoping, for political reasons, that we could get away without centralising our efforts?

It’s not really the exporting of the PPE that I have a problem with, it’s the complete dismissal of all scientific advice so that we weren’t prepared.

China needed the kit, we were right to send it. Except we didn’t plan to meet the need that was coming and being screamed at the government.

Pandemic identified as biggest risk in government risk register + pandemic happening. Contingency planning is probably not the most stupid thing that the government could have done.

Point 1:

Snow plows aren’t consumables.  PPE is.  This makes your seemingly sensible analogy actually quite weak.

You can gradually over purchase PPE to ramp up a stockpile of consumables limited by the shelf life and the rate of consumption.  Set against an economy with inflation this can save money if you have cheap storage space.  

This is exactly what the Wintertree household does with long shelf life food and non perishable household goods, and it’s how we rode out the entire panic buying period without skipping a beat.

Point 2: A lot could have been done to prime the pipeline to produce more PPE 8 weeks ago; if we didn’t need it in the end it was clear we could sell it to someone else who did.

You do know that demand for something going up by 5000% is that demand going up by a multiple of 50, not a multiple of 5000.

You know, over the whole UK they probably do have 3,000 or more snow plows and some extremely large piles of rocksalt for just that purpose.

You might be right that the Daily Mail wouldn't have liked stockpiling PPE to the level recommended in the UK planning exercise for pandemic flu.  And of course the Tories didn't do it.   But anyone who had the briefing on how bad a flu pandemic could be and didn't think that stockpiling some relatively inexpensive equipment was reasonable would be reckless.   George Bush and Barrack Obama both took preparations for a flu pandemic very seriously, only Trump decided it wasn't worth it. 

... and we have got more kit back from China than we sent.  Which makes the argument moot.

If we saw a massive global 12-24 month long blizzard moving East to West in September I'd hope we have the 3000 ploughs for December. 

In 1976 I was working in the Central Ordnance Depot in Chilwell.

My department was responsible for all heavy plant for the armed forces.

At approximately 4.45pm on a Friday evening in December* I received a phone call from the supply squadron at RAF Bruggen in Germany.

They wanted to know if we had a snow plough in stock.

When I asked why, it turned out that as it had begun to snow in Germany they urgently needed to clear the runway but their snow plough was broken and beyond repair.

They weren’t best pleased to discover that although we did possess a snow plough it would take several days for it to be delivered to them, it being the weekend and everyone except me having gone home. Luckily the Soviets hadn’t planned to invade that weekend.

* the exact date being lost in the fog of too much alcohol having been consumed in the intervening years.

WTF is it it with UKc and the guardian and any other newspaper? 

A little light reading. Was this pandemic taken seriously at the start?

Sky News: https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-grotesque-to-claim-boris-johnson-ski...

It's not for ICU consultants to sort supply chains and implement ideas. It's for the huge chain of management between them and the government.

Yes it was a larger effort built by an army of contractors also, who should be praised. Well done for trying to take away from the massive achievement there. There's no point denying it the army, like it or not gets things done because it has a can do attitude and battle winning logistics. It works on a set of values and standards which put the objective before any individual and they don't care if you don't sleep for a week in order to get the task done. 

Good point. But when your order for 5000 units arrives and there are only 100, it’s still quite a serious problem indicating that many others are in the same boat. Indeed, the worldwide competition for PPE seems to prove that our government is only average in its incompetence! Nevertheless, we should demand more of an advanced economy.

Was it Mathew Pinisent?

It might have been missed that the mayor of Osaka has asked people to donate their raincoats so front line staff don't need to wear binbags. 

  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52336388

NHS work much in the same way, except for the going to war bit. The objective comes before the individual and the government know this and use it to their advantage by playing on good will and a work ethic where the patient comes before personal safety.

This has sadly been demonstrated by at  lease 50 NHS staff losing their lives. I'm guessing a lack of appropriate PPE had a large role in their deaths.

If a blizzard was identified in September and people trusted the forecast and every county in the world ordered 3000 snowploughs, I doubt you would have them for December.

hindsight is a powerful tool and yes we should have ordered more 8 or 10weeks ago, but if anyone had said that so much of the world would be in lockdown by end of March, they would have been locked in the David Icke suite.

To be fair we do not with 100% certainity know that.PPE does not 100% guarantee protection in most cases.It reduces the risk.

What has got me about the " delivery" from Turkey is the logisitical naivety displayed by the politicians in saying we will have this delivery from Turkey on Sunday. I can imagine the pressure put on the supplier to do this and the supplier saying yes, even though they could not comply and nobody was willing to listen( probably to somebody on our side saying well they never delivery on time......). This is not to blame the politicans but just suggests an innocence in procurement.

The other side of the story, to the Sunday Times article.

https://healthmedia.blog.gov.uk/2020/04/19/response-to-sunday-times-insight...

The blizzard was identified in '16.

No but if you suddenly and clearly see 3 years of snow coming you immediately do everything necessary to make sure you don't get buried before you figure out how to live beneath snow.

This wasn't unexpected, our 'wargames' indicated we were under-prepared but we kept cutting. When arrived it arrived half a world away, we had ample warning but failed to take heed and prepare. When it started arriving and we knew what it would do we squandered our chance to delay and prepare. This is the most shameful failure of government to perform it's most fundamental role, protecting its citizens. Not entirely their fault of course, they people unsuited to this role. We elected ideologues, idiots and looters for their zealotry not their competence and we did so using a system that handed total power to those a minority supported. We shouldn't be surprised that they're distracted and incompetent but we can make sure it doesn't happen again.

jk

Dreadfully pedantic I know, but 5000% means multiply by 50 not 5000.

A particularly good example of how figures can be misinterpreted, probably in this case by the majority of the population. 

As an aside, I think using percentages for multiples (ie percentages larger than, say, 200) should be strongly discouraged.

Martin

In what context? there was an interview on BBC with NHS procurment person this morning. As he pointed out repeatedly alot of Trusts have plenty of the right PPE. Indicating its more a logistical issue in getting it to the right places.

I would agree with you if the whole system had collapsed and everywhere did not have  PPE. Clearly this is not the case.

It's basically the same thing as the halls with beds they had in 1918, the minimal possible 'hospital' you can put in place fast in a crisis.    They have no idea how to staff it because putting beds in a conference hall does not create nurses that know how to deal with ventilated patients.  If it ever fills up it will be a hell hole.

Compare China that put in a purpose designed fever hospital made from portable buildings in a car park with the equipment and staff from unaffected regions.   The UK could have concentrated resources from the rest of the country to help London if they had cordoned London off when it started to develop into a hotspot but because they let it spread all over the country it was on its own.  So they have a hospital that the other hospitals can't send patients to without also allocating staff - in which case they may as well keep them in their own ICU.

Did you see the squaddies moving boxes of equipment into the hospital.   They were taking them off a trolley with a long chain of people instead of one guy pushing the f*cking trolley.

The reason for the army involvement is because the government wants us to feel good seeing people in uniform on the TV.   Even better if they can show a few helicopters or transport planes.   There's plenty of people and companies that deliver things and build things for a living looking for a job at the moment.  Zero reason not to hire them except that seeing the army makes folk think the government has its finger out.

In what context, what? Sorry I don't really understand the question.

Do you mean in what context is this a shameful failure of the government's first duty? This context, the ongoing pandemic, sorry if that wasn't clear, I wasn't talking specifically about their newly hired PPE scapegoat. It knowingly failed to maintain or build preparedness for, failed to heed clear warning of then bungled its response to this pandemic.

Or was it a different point you were querying?

jk

I got slagged off for mentioning this the other day, but a friend of ours has been blown away from the help she has received from the Army. 'We talk about something - decide what to do for the best - and next morning it's been done.'

I won't fault the army, or other military forces, as they are doing a great job. AGAIN! They are probably being used to save paying private companies, whereas the military will already be being paid as part of the defence budget and can be considered as 'free'.  

Well for a start there has not been an total collapse in PPE supply, so in the context of that the govt has not failed.It may or may not have some local issues.

These Nightinglae hospitals are not full, why not just juggle some PPE to those areas which need it. Its a logistical issue not a wholesale collapse in the system.

I should be clear that I don't want to fault the army or military themselves.   Military medical units are definitely needed as are the military helicopters that are supplementing civilian ones for medical evacuation.   Anyone that puts themselves in harms way and getting close to Covid is definitely harms way should be appreciated.

However, I think we also need to see that government is playing a propaganda game to divert from its own failings and it is much better at propaganda than it is at solving the actual problems.   

Some of the tactics:

1. Blame China

2. Make people feel patriotic with pictures of soldiers and military equipment.  We don't actually need soldiers doing basic construction work or driving vans.  There's more than enough expert civilian companies.

3. Clapping and badges

4. 'Blitz Spirit' and Heath Robinson attempts to make clinically useless ventilators in ridiculous time scales. 

You missed

5: Blame the English and claim things would be perfect if it wasnt for them

Things would be a lot better for Scotland if we weren't under the control of Westminster.

That's not because Scotland is superior to most countries, it's because the current crop of Tories are terrible.  Only Trump is doing worse.  Even Iran did better.

You know that flight full of PPE from Turkey the UK Government were on about and saying it was late...

The Turks say they only placed the official order on Sunday.

https://twitter.com/itsagoinwrang/status/1252287833047535616

Rather feeble and doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.

Having worked in both Addenbrooks (an apparently good hospital) and the army. I'd say army logistics, planning and delivery is much better. Addenbrooks is a shambles, my mother manages an NHS department and when I told her about the security breaches, negligence and blatent disregard for safety and hygiene she was appalled. 

Squaddies get a bad rap but they're living proof that you can teach anyone almost anything and get the job done without fuss. Polar opposites of the attitude I found on the NHS which is the most class ridden, obnoxious  organisation I've worked with. There were many absolute incompetents and we'll qualified idiots who were not a bit driven to save lives by implementing simple HSE procedures. Somebody else's problem was the prevailing attitude. 

In the army you'd be called a Jack Bastard for letting the team down in that way. It's not the attitude of all staff, some are amazing, self sacrificing and would lay their life on the line for others. But esprit dcorps is not a given within the NHS. 

Latest from the Guardian in the 'couldn't make this sh*t up' category.   The company running the UK Government pandemic flu warehouse got sold off and was in a dispute with its landlord who threatened to 'lock the doors' on it.

I mean, how in hell does a landlord get to think they can lock the doors on a pandemic flu stockpile.  It's like thinking you could lock the doors on Faslane.   I'm not that big on the Army getting involved in stuff but a key facility like this should be protected like a defence site and interfering with its operation should have severe consequences.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/revealed-private-firm-running...