According to a recent Ealing Council bulletin:"The council has launched an enhanced local contact tracing team to help improve test and trace system locally; a new walk-in testing centre has been opened in the borough; the council has expressed interest in being part of the mass testing programme - and has been speaking to the NHS about a mass vaccination programme."We’ve got a new walk-in testing centre that’s just opened at Gurnell Leisure Centre to sit alongside the mobile testing unit in the car park there and also to add capacity to the walk-in centres that we’ve got at Michael Flanders Centre in Acton and the Featherstone Terrace car park in Southall. There is capacity locally for people to get a test so, please, do get a test and, if you’re positive, self-isolate. "This week we’ve launched our own locally enhanced contact tracing team at the council to identify people who have come into contact with positive, infected people that have not been contacted by the national contact tracing system. We are trying to use our local contacts and community languages to make contact with these people to stop the spread of the virus. So, if you are contacted, please share your contacts with that contact tracing team."We’ve also expressed interest in rolling out the government’s mass testing programme. It’s important given the rates of COVID cases in our borough that we do that mass testing. There’s still issues about funding. We've been in contact with other council leaders and public health directors today, with Matt Hancock the Secretary of State, and the need for funding that mass testing was made very, very clear."We’re also working with our NHS partners to roll out the mass vaccination programme: To the vulnerable at first, but to everybody when that vaccine becomes available. You’ve all heard the news that, hopefully, there will be an effective vaccine available very shortly. And we could, hopefully, be starting to roll that out before the end of the year."
Peter Evans ● 1736d