Standard cleaning returns as hospitals drop social distancing

The UK Health Security Agency has recommended three pragmatic changes that hospitals can make to the current management of coronavirus infection control measures, with a focus on elective care.

The new advice should be used by local acute care providers to allow them to start to make further safe changes to their services, in line with a local assessment of risk.

The three interventions include a reduction of physical distancing from two metres to one metre with appropriate mitigations where patient access can be controlled, as well as removing the need for a negative PCR and three days self-isolation before selected elective procedures.

Hospitals will also re-adopt standard rather than enhanced cleaning procedures. Enhanced cleaning can be discontinued in agreed low risk areas such as planned or scheduled elective care and providers can revert to standard cleaning procedures between patients.

Dr Jenny Harries, UKHSA chief executive, said: “We have reviewed the existing Covid-19 IPC evidence-based guidance and made a series of initial pragmatic recommendations on how local providers can start to safely remove some of the interventions that have been in place in elective care specifically for Covid-19. This is a first step to help the NHS treat more patients more quickly, while ensuring their safety and balancing their different needs for care.”

Health and Social Care Secretary, Sajid Javid, said: “As ever more people benefit from the protection of our phenomenal vaccination campaign, we can now safely begin to relieve some of the most stringent infection control measures where they are no longer necessary to benefit patients and ease the burden on hardworking NHS staff. I thank Dr Jenny Harries and the UKHSA for their recommendations, and look forward to their assessment of what further steps can be taken in other healthcare settings including in primary care.”