1/ Following the Prime Minister's decision to be photographed, in Hexham Hospital, without a mask (despite everybody around him wearing one), I thought I'd look out the current guidance.
2/ (He clearly made a point of being filmed and photographed without a mask, and ensuring that those images were widely circulated…
3/ (…Whether this is a defiant dig at the mask-wearing rules he knows are necessary, but he hates, or another of his "dead cat" distraction ploys to draw attention away from gathering scandals, it was clearly deliberate.)
4/ England's Winter Plan is at gov.uk/government/pub… . It says on p16 "Wear a face covering in crowded and enclosed settings where you come into
contact with people you do not normally meet."
contact with people you do not normally meet."
5/ As far as I'm aware the guidance emphasised in July at england.nhs.uk/2021/07/nhs-pa… still applies. It says:
"NHS Patients, staff and visitors must continue to wear face coverings in healthcare settings".
No exception there for politicians, not even ministers or prime ministers.
"NHS Patients, staff and visitors must continue to wear face coverings in healthcare settings".
No exception there for politicians, not even ministers or prime ministers.
6/ In the meantime, as long as incidence (cases per 100k popn per week) remains above 10, the risk of your being infected is high enough that we should all be following the guidance in the winter plan.
7/ With case numbers at current levels mask-wearing should be mandatory, not just in hospitals (as it is at present) but in other places where people mix.
8/ And, of course, we should have tight regulations to ensure good ventilation/filtration to remove infectious particles from the air, in hospitals, shops, schools, workplaces, etc.
9/ It may be that after three doses of vaccine the chances of being infectious are so low that we can stop worrying about people who have had their three doses being infectious
10/ But we don't have the data to show that yet, and we don't know how long it would apply (will thre-dose protection wane and, if so, how quickly?)
11/ And, even if we did have data on this, the NHS app considers that two doses = "fully vaccinated"; and, if you have a third dose, it doesn't appear on the Covid certificate part of your app.
12/ (You can find confirmation of your third Covid vaccine dose it if you hunt - under one-off medicines - but you'd have to risk sharing private information to show it to somebody.)
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