A plea from GP practices across Northumberland

Wednesday 21 July 2021

Northumberland GPs, along with NHS health teams across the region, will continue to have measures in place to help protect everyone from infections such as COVID-19 and flu – including wearing masks.

NHS Northumberland Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has agreed along with other local health organisations that the enhanced infection control measures of – mask wearing, hand washing and social distancing must continue to be in place throughout all GP practices and other community health settings to help protect staff, patients and visitors.

While the government roadmap plans to remove measures like this from everyday life from Monday July 19 it’s vital that the public can be confident about visiting or accessing local healthcare services safely.

It’s important to recognise that while life starts to return to normal in public spaces, healthcare settings come with different challenges and have more vulnerable and poorly people. With that in mind NHS organisations across Northumberland and the wider region are planning to keep the safety measures in place as the NHS heads into another winter facing increasing demand and pressure on services.

When visiting GP practices or if in contact with community health care professionals wearing masks, social distancing and hand washing must continue as it has really helped keep people safe and stop the spread of COVID-19, so it’s hoped that continuing with these measures will also prevent people spreading flu, norovirus and other variants during the rest of the year.

Graham Syers, clinical chair at Northumberland CCG said: “It is really important that we keep our patients and staff as safe as possible and keeping these measures in place will help us do that.

“Our GP practices face different challenges to other public places and we need to have robust infection preventions and control measures to help protect people. We want all of our staff, patients and visitors to feel safe when they some to see us and would ask the public to please be respectful of this.

“Thank you all for your support as we continue with these simple but safe measures.”