The NHS Confederation, which represents NHS bosses, has called for free Covid testing to remain and said 75% of senior staff in England did not want self-isolation rules to end. BBC News has more.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce new relaxations to Covid rules in England on Monday.
This could include scrapping PCR test centres and free lateral flow tests as part of a ‘living with Covid’ strategy.
The Government has spent billions of pounds on testing throughout the pandemic. Experts believe in future it could be used only in hospitals and care settings, or to deal with major outbreaks.
In the survey of more than 300 NHS leaders, four-fifths said they disagreed with the expected plan to end free testing.
And they also expressed the need for regular testing to continue for health staff and key workers.
Asked on Thursday if free Covid tests would be scrapped next week, Health Secretary Sajid Javid said: “We are looking at how we learn to live with Covid. And that does mean the protections we’ve enjoyed over the last few months, that they all should be reviewed. So we’re looking at the very latest data and next week we’ll have more to say about it.”
Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the Confederation, said: “Hospital admissions and deaths linked to coronavirus continue to fall nationally and this is allowing the NHS to bring back many routine services that it was asked to de-prioritise during the peaks of the pandemic, including some non-urgent elective procedures.
“With the success of the vaccine and new Covid treatments, this offers real hope as we learn to live with the virus. But the Government cannot wave a magic wand and pretend the threat has disappeared entirely.”
He said not enough was yet known about how much long-term protection vaccines provided and there was still the uncertainty of future strains developing.
Professor Dame Helen Stokes-Lampard, who chairs the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, says the change being proposed by the Government “feels very sudden”.
“We do have to learn to live safely with Covid in the medium term. That does not mean pretending the threat to our health, and in some cases life, simply no longer exists,” she said.
“We should take a more gradual, phased approach to relaxing the rules and carefully watch what happens to the rates of infection – particularly in healthcare settings or other environments where people are particularly at risk.”
A group of charities representing the 500,000 people in the UK with impaired immune systems have also called for free Covid testing to remain.
Maybe Boris should keep restrictions in place till the end of July, like last year. Just in case, you know. Before bringing them back in in September, obviously.
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
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I’m absolutely delighted! It’s so good to hear from the experts (the NHS Confederation, a group of immune system charities, etc) that these tests are FREE!
I was labouring under the delusion that we taxpayers were actually paying for them, so it’s really uplifting to hear that they are actually FREE!
We should be told the names of all these people who are supplying the raw materials and components for FREE, manufacturing the tests for FREE, shipping them from China for FREE, distributing them for FREE and processing the tests for FREE!
Or have I perhaps misunderstood?
Testing people without symptoms, using unreliable tests which were never designed for diagnostic purposes, is a waste of money and just another tool of propaganda.
If you feel ill, don’t go to work. Take a couple of paracetamol and lots of fluids. If really bad, go to bed and stay warm.
I have friends who were chosen to take part in some kind of national Covid survey. It entails someone coming to their house on a regular basis to test them and ask questions. When I saw them a couple of days ago I tentatively asked if they’d ever thought that they might be partly responsible for prolonging the whole Covid thing. The husband scoffed and said ‘don’t care as long as they keep paying us’.
I wonder who the senior people were of whom they asked the questions?
Senior ‘managers’, of course.
It surprised me from the beginning that the civil servants/SAGE/NHS bosses were all not held in leash at the beginning of the pandemic. This freedom of expression of different views was most likely because the gov. could not be sure how the wind was blowing. Dissident views expressed by persons could be used later on, if necessary, as a reason of sacking, reorganizing etc.
Time has come for this now. Switzerland will abandon its covid advisory board. Time to reorganize everything i.e. sack SAGE. Also a NHS reshuffle at the top so the remaining will shut up.
‘Health Secretary Sajid Javid said: “We are looking at how we learn to live with Covid. And that does mean the protections we’ve enjoyed over the last few months, that they all should be reviewed. So we’re looking at the very latest data and next week we’ll have more to say about it.”’
“enjoyed” – stupid, stupid word to use, if they want to convey want I hope they are now trying to . . .
“We should take a more gradual, phased approach”????
Jeez, we could barely have progressed more gradually and glacially.
Of course we all know about the vested interests of doing no work at our expense and having the Cos Covid excuse for everything.
Those of us who have hated lockdown with a passion since March 2020 and have had our mental health in the toilet need this to end decisively now.
I’ve only just stopped having sleepless nights wondering what new tyranny the mad bar stewards will inflict on us next and I won’t believe we are fully out of the woods until we have had several months of the old normal, if we ever get there.
That means no mask mandates anywhere, including medical settings and domestic flights. It means no mandatory testing to access anything including a visit to an elderly relative in a care home. It means no free tests handed out like sweeties so the panickers can keep on testing themselves at our expense.. it means no more pushing through constant ads and unsolicited texts and phone calls to get the vaccine or booster.
In short, they all need to shut the **** up, but they won’t… Read more »
“. . . the protections we’ve enjoyed over the last few months”.
What ‘protections’?
Presumably, this unctous clown means the failed lockdowns, failed masks, failed testing ponzi scheme which have led to more deaths than claimed by the virus – assuming, in the absence of scientific proof, that the wretched tthing actually exists.
The protection we should be demanding as a matter of urgency is from the snake oil salesmen seeking to jab our children with experimental Big Pharma snake oil which the data shows is a far greater danger to them than COVID.
Javid is clearly from the same lying, self-serving mould as his execrable predecessor and, come the reckoning, must be made to pay the price for his treachery.
The NHS is well provided with drama queens.
NHS bosses….owned by whom we ask?
Why do people enjoy the restrictions and silly laws? Is it because they are sadistic? Insane? Cowards?
These people are ill. Mentally ill. Brainwashed by the idiot box.
Just do the jobs that you are paid (arguably, lol, too much) to do and let proper medics do theirs.
Start by actually treating patients properly ie scrap your insane in-house covid rules.
Fat chance,- Doctors are hamstrung with protocols and daren’t exercise their own discretion whilst trying to do theirs.
Even the bloody wards are ruled by the pen pushers.
Have you ever wondered why Ivermectin is never used/recommended.
Have you ever wondered why governments seem reluctant to promote healthy diets, the benefits of exercise.
No, just make sure you get tested and get jabbed.
Soon to be available, a pill that will let you eat any shit you want – without having to exercise.
Courtesy of bigpharma.
What a world.
Almost a privilege to be alive to see it.
I despair at the use of the word “free” as in free testing or free health care.
This is one of the root problems of our society – the lazy idea that when the government provides something it’s free.
Nothing is free. When the government gives away “free” stuff, it just means giving someone something and getting someone else in the country to pay for it. By force.
They can dress it up however they like – social responsibility, fair distribution of wealth or whatever Orwellian terms they come up with – but it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul.
No government anywhere, past or present, has ever had any money.
It’s worse than that, for at least three decades “free” stuff has been dished out on the never never, not from actual tax revenue
Basically: people making money out of selling ‘tests’ don’t want people to stop buying them.
It’s more like NHS Safetyism. 17 layers of job security due to public gullibility, squared.
Follow the money!
Out of our pockets and into theirs!
I want doesn’t get.
Let me think….. I wonder why they might want the current arrangements to continue! Ah yes – It’s just come to me!
I bet they don’t! I’d like to know how often they have taken advantage of the isolating rules!
hardly a surprise given the amount of bedwetting,bullshit and drivel I’ve heard from NHS Trsut heads on the radio over the last 2 years.
It’s oh see eassy for these goons to demand more convbid bullshit of choice, they’re not acountable to anyone and never acknowledge that they’ve been disasterously out of kilter with reality these past 2 years.
Which is why they’re in those jobs. Too thick and too scared to work in a real world job where if you cock up you’re out, not promoted to another NHS role elsewhere
One of my hopes for when the truth about the so-called pandemic comes out…
the severity of the virus was exaggerated; the pandemic response was unnecessarily draconian; the measures adopted by the NHS probably killed more people than they saved; the vaccines which were promoted and delivered by the NHS didn’t work and caused harm; the NHS actively discouraged investigation of COVID-19 treatments and abandoned many patients in the early months of the pandemic; the NHS also sent many elderly patients back to care homes when they were ill with COVID, causing their ultimate death and spreading the virus more widely; many hospitals were very quiet during much of the pandemic, while people were dying or becoming ill with untreated non-COVID illnesses at home; many valuable and valued NHS staff left due to the unnecessary vaccine mandate even though it was ultimately abandoned GPs effectively closing their doors to their patients for long periods of time, either due to lockdown or because they were too busy earning easy money from vaccination and all of the other atrocities committed over the last two years …when all of this becomes publicly known, as it will do in time, I hope that people… Read more »
I suppose turning this around a bit, my other hope for the future is that more people realise that we are all responsible for our own and our own family’s health, and we take active steps to stay fit and healthy and, be less dependent on the NHS and Big Pharma, since they are clearly not trustworthy.
Also that we, if we can, make arrangements to ensure that our elderly parents and grandparents can live independent lives at home for as long as possible, since we cannot rely on either the NHS or care homes to take good care of them.
You know, I know and they know (deep down) that all of your points are accurate. However, I would be very surprised if the outcome of the coming enquiry isn’t exactly the opposite of most of your points. It depresses me to say that they got away with similar crimes against humanity with HIV, so they will be hoping to get away with it again. The sheep won’t be waking up, their brainwashing has become even more hardened in the narrative that the so-called vaccines saved us all.
Yes, I fear you may be right. The narrative that there was a deadly pandemic and the NHS saved us all with their vaccines, their COVID tests and their general saintliness is so deeply ingrained it would take the NHS equivalent of a frying pan to the head from a domestic abuser to make people wake up to the reality. Still, a man can dream.
Perhaps this was Dido Harding’s plan – to get everyone to hate the NHS so what was left of it could be sold off to her friends who would “see her alright”.
She and her hubby have been trying to get rid of the NHS for years.
Vote Tory – get Tory – they hate the idea of the poor having free or cheap medical treatment, that’s all there is to it.
Well, it’s all over now for the NHS – apart from its value as the hub of all personal information and surveillance reports on the population and the enforcer of Vaccine Health Passports – a tyranny dreamed up by Gates.
There’s no such thing as free or cheap medical treatment. Like there’s no such thing as free or cheap food, energy, transportation etc etc. This is the problem with the NHS. Ever since 1947 the UK taxpayer has been fed the lie that “The NHS is the envy of the world”. Funny that nowhere else in the world copies our approach. But it does mean that all the bureaucrats think they must be paid shed loads of money, while at the same time treating clinical staff if they are useless
From the boating forum this evening from the cretin who continually attacks me over my stance as regards ‘Covid’ being a scam:
“I’m glad I’m not taking the chance. But then I understand the science, including how one can have a mild illness, having had ones jabs to help protect society as well as oneself and loved ones.
Unvaccinated people are 20 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than fully vaccinated, data shows.
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/politifact/article/unvaxxed-20-times-more-likely-covid-death-16772714.php
People Are Hiding That Their Unvaccinated Loved Ones Died of COVID
With the arrival of vaccines, compassion for COVID deaths began to dry up, sometimes replaced by scorn.
http://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/01/unvaccinated-covid-deaths-secret-grief/621269/ “
Well said
Another point I’ve made before. If our much-deified NHS is the envy of the world, as the lockdown zealots keep telling us it is, why has nowhere else in the world tried to copy it?
Protections we’ve “enjoyed”. Pass me the sick bucket.
Uncle Sajid knows what’s best for you.
And we all know what’s good for ‘Uncle’ Sajid, don’t we.
The moron single downvoter is present again I see.
I’ll save you the trouble of your sad existence and downvote myself.
🤣
I have upvoted you to counteract your downvote and because you are a fellow Scot.
Some people don’t like their hobbies to be too taxing.
I reckon the ‘downvoter’ will be in trouble with his paymasters. He has been carefully placed to oppose the points of views of regular posters by writing irritating and opposing posts, but what is he doing, the lazy so and so? Just goes down the list of replies and downvotes them. Easy. No thought required. You’ll be on a charge young man/woman!
They can self-isolate then, and lose pay to do it. The rest of us will do what we want
I have a mate who works in NHS
He tells me there is a team head at his hospital who is band 8 (I think) on 50 or 60k minimum. Has worked from home all pandemic because his wife (lower band, still on 40k or so) is clinically vulnerable (yeh right..).
Neither are back at work. Both have jobs which, realistically, need to people facing. So between them basically creaming best part of 100k a year for sat on their idle arses all week…
And getting more and more obese so they’ll end up demanding NHS treatment to save them from their own lack of willpower
That’s three quarters of NHS Bosses who should be handed their P45’s.
The NHS is supposed to serve the public, not the other way round.
Javid talks about “the protections we’ve enjoyed” rather than “the restrictions we’ve endured”. What a warped mindset.
The ‘protection’ we’ve damn well paid for!
“Serve the public” ?
No longer.
A warped mindset is the fundamental qualification for a cabinet member
Oh there is a surprise – easy when you have a permanent (impossible to be fired) job and a pension – so yeah – why stress. In fact just stay home its great – while so many have no choice but to continue in insecure jobs with low pay and no pension –
All the people making these stupid decisions are not really affected – funny that isn’t it.
They doubtless enjoy being able to afford private health care.
Worth reading in full….
Well, certainly more words but I lost the will to live after reading Covid: which funnily enough was the first one.
Bedwetters. All of them.
So now 300 Non-Jobbers (NHS management) want to maintain the misery and disruption. Is that for “safety” or as a cover for their failures?
And, ‘not enough was known about the long term protections offered by the vaccine.’ But let’s keep sticking it in to people eh? Anyway, apparently they have been a success. Upwards of 100,000 now in their graves might take issue with that.
And they also expressed the need for regular testing to continue for health staff and key workers.
Which is yet further newspeak meaning that loads of false positives will allow them to send staff home and therefore claim “we’re overwhelmed.” Also meaning that the ops previously cancelled can be cancelled once again. Covid, the gift that keeps on giving.
Followed by:
Professor Dame Helen Stokes-Lampard, who chairs the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, says the change being proposed by the Government “feels very sudden”.
A bit like initial lockdown then. Now she wants a gradual re-opening. I wonder why we didn’t try gradual lockdown?
Finally, we have a bunch of alleged do-gooders, erm charidees, screaming for useless tests to continue being funded by taxpayers.
Completely farcical. Completely Orwellian.
I’m sure I must… Read more »
In the extortion-funded sector not doing something gets the same pay as doing something. but with less effort.
The only occasion when it’s acceptable for the True Believers to express doubts about the ‘effectiveness’ of the clotshots is when they are pushing for more restrictions (or to retain existing ones)!
See the Dystopian plan for the NHS and it becomes obvious what their intentions are – has no-one read it yet?
All Management actions and crafted pronouncements are coloured by the plan and their orders to prepare for it.
The NHS are to be the “New Word Order” enforcers of the UK arm of the Health Tyranny and Vaccine imposition – individual care from a Doctor will br a thing of the past
Spot on 👍👍