UHS launches COVID ZERO campaign

A first-of-its-kind campaign has been launched to wipe out the transmission of coronavirus in Southampton’s hospitals.

University Hospital Southampton is now planning to bring back services and healthcare support and is leading from the frontline in ensuring that patients who need treatment can access it safely.

The COVID ZERO campaign is the first of its kind to be launched by a hospital trust in England. It has one clear message both for the Southampton community as well as the Trust’s 11,500 staff; Walk, Wear, Wash.

The aim of campaign is to enable the trust to return services as quickly as possible while keeping staff and patients safe from the threat of coronavirus by ensuring there is no transmission of the disease. Effective onward infection prevention will mean staff who have been redeployed during the pandemic will be able to return to their regular roles, helping services to resume at full strength.

Hospital leaders today urged the community to play its part and act now – warning that the stark alternative is the very real possibility of a second wave that could overwhelm the city’s NHS services. Derek Sandeman, chief medical officer at UHS, warned that while rates of infection have dropped because of the effect of the lockdown, it would not take much to rise again. He urged the public to collectively work to reduce the reproduction (R) number to prevent the onward spread of the virus as the country eases out of lockdown measures.

He said: “It is clear that people are beginning to feel that we have won the war against COVID-19, but this is not the case. Nothing has changed, the pandemic is still here – the virus is still in our community and it remains infectious and dangerous. The numbers remain higher now than when it began. It kills the young, the old, the healthy, the fit, those with ill-health and those in their prime. It takes decades of life from those who die, it can easily and rapidly return, threatening to overwhelm us.”