Cheshire and Merseyside’s Directors of Public Health (DsPH) currently meet for weekly calls. The key messages from the meeting held on 19th March are as follows:
Feedback on The Association of Directors of Public Health (ADPH) and Chief Medical Officer (CMO) sessions
- Following two recent events attended by local DsPH from the ADPH and the CMO, a policy document will shortly be published on the vision and structure of the soon-to-be-established National Institute for Health Protection (NIHP)
- DsPH will work together on developing a response to this document and outline any key considerations that will need to be made
Combined Intelligence for Population Health Action (CIPHA) dashboard for Government’s four ‘tests’ for lifting lockdown restrictions
- A new weekly dashboard has been developed that provides a clear snapshot of how Cheshire and Merseyside is performing against the Government’s four tests for lifting lockdown restrictions (vaccine deployment, hospitalisations, infection rate and appearance of new variants of concern)
- The dashboard is designed to provide a short summary and will link to a more comprehensive report if required
- Thanks were expressed to the Intelligence Network
Contact tracing in Cheshire and Merseyside
- DsPH are considering the future model for contact tracing, including how cases flow into contact tracing teams (e.g. directly through local authorities or to a Cheshire and Merseyside ‘hub’) and will work together on a combined approach
Good news and gratitude
- Cheshire East has successfully recruited two Public Health Consultants, start dates to be confirmed
- The Liverpool Public Health annual report is due to be published on 23rd March 2021
- The bid submitted to DHSC has successfully passed the first stage of approval and will now be presented to the Demand Board for review