Dental teams a priority for COVID vaccination and more testing
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- Published: Thursday, 17 December 2020 07:43
- Written by News Editor
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Dentists and their teams in NHS, private or mixed practice will be part of a priority group of healthcare workers to receive the COVID vaccination. Starting in hospitals the programme has been rolled out to GPs. The BDA has notified that all primary care contractors in England will be contacted by the NHS this week regarding lateral flow antigen testing kits for staff.
The CDO (England) has said she will keep dentists updated on timelines and progress and what this means for dental teams and more information is in her regular update.
The last CDO update said: “The JCVI have put patient-facing health and social care staff into the top two priority groups because of their heightened risk of exposure to the virus. So, any appointments not used for the initial groups will be used for healthcare workers who are at highest risk of serious illness from covid. The details of how dental professionals would be vaccinated, along with other healthcare professionals such as GPs and pharmacists, will be confirmed as soon as possible.”
Lateral flow antigen testing in primary care
The BDA reports that all primary care contractors in England will be contacted by the NHS this week regarding lateral flow antigen testing kits for staff. Lateral flow antigen testing will now be rolled out to asymptomatic patient-facing staff delivering NHS services across all four primary care contractor groups (Medical, Dental, Optometry, and Community Pharmacy) in England.
Lateral flow antigen testing, in conjunction with PCR testing, aims to reduce further transmission and enhance the resilience of NHS services, by improving virus detection. Patient-facing staff will be asked to test twice-weekly using self-administered nasal swabbing and report their results through an online platform. Any positive lateral flow antigen tests will need to be followed up by a confirmatory PCR test.
Primary care contractors will be sent information on how to obtain the kits as well as an invitation to order lateral flow testing devices directly from Primary Care Services England (PCSE), who will be managing the ordering and delivery process. The final closing date for orders across all contractors will be Wednesday 30 December.
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