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Covid-19 Downgraded From High Consequence Infectious Disease Along With PPE Standards

The Government have decided to downgrade the covid-19 pandemic in the UK from being one of high consequence, and as a result to downgrade the PPE required by Nurses and doctors treating patients with the infection!

Professor John Ashton, world known expert in public health and previously the North West Regional Public Health Director, has issued this video discussing the lowering of PPE standards and the reclassification of the virus itself.

 

The government officially now states that:

“The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the outbreak. Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase. The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an HCID.”

The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens is made up of scientists, doctors, professors, members of NHS foundations and one Group Captain Christopher Melville OBE  representing the Ministry of Defence.

The role of the ACDP is:

“an expert committee of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). Its work cuts across a number of organisations, including the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Public Health England (PHE) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).” Their terms of reference are – “To provide as requested independent scientific advice to HSE, and to ministers through DHSC, Defra, and their counterparts under devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, on all aspects of hazards and risks to workers and others from exposure to pathogens.”

Readers of this website may remember that the Government back in 2015 rejected recommendations from another 'advisory committee' of experts on NHS ventilator and PPE stockpiling, asked them to change their recommendation; which they did in 2016!

So much for the independence of these expert bodies from Government!

IT is entirely legitimate to ask these questions about the Government's actions in doing this:

* Has the government covered its back to stop legal cases against it for not supplying the correct safety equipment to frontline medics who die given that many doctors are complaining of lack of PPE

*Is the government continuing with its ‘herd-immunity’ programme irrespective of what it appears to be doing (just as austerity silently killed 120,000 people) – and was this why they seemed to act so late against scientific advice?

* Is the plan to get this disease through the population as fast as possible to save the economy? (Hedge funds, corporations, billionaires, Brexit deadline, etc – the main financial backers of the Conservative party?).

The reclassification of Covid-19 by the government is either stupidity or something far more sinister.

However the recommendation on the government document says:

“All healthcare workers managing possible and confirmed cases should follow the updated national infection and prevention (IPC) guidance for COVID-19.“   the message seems clear – Covid-19 is not classed as a high consequence infectious disease, which it patently is. Why has the entire country been put on lockdown if Covid-19 is not a threat?

Additionally, the updated document ends with – “This guidance includes instructions about different personal protective equipment (PPE) ensembles that are appropriate for different clinical scenarios.”

Source: John Ashton / NHS / Gov.uk

You can also download the Government documents relating to the downgrading of the pandemic in the UK here

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