The detailed plans for redevelopment of the St Paul's Church site in Whitley Wood Lane, with new church facilities and a substantial surgery building over 3 floors were submitted to Reading Borough Council in October. It is planning application 191265. View the plans for the new South Reading Health Hub

South Reading Patient Voice will meet online at 6pm on Wednesday, 18th November 2020. There will be a short introduction to vaccines against Covid-19, news from local PPGs, and reports from local health providers and their public meetings. Please see the attached agenda for joining details.

The Governing Body of the Berkshire West CCG meets in public from 9.30am to 12.30pm on Tuesday, 8th December 2020. Further details willl apear closer to the meeting.

This meeting has been cancelled. The Berkshire West Primary Care Commissioning Committee meets in public on Wednesday 13th January from 1pm to 3pm. More details to follow.

Pulse magazine has reported that GP practices will be able to opt in to offering self-administered Covid-19 swab testing for symptomatic patients, practice staff and members and their households. As we have a designated Covid-19 Hub for symptomatic patients in Reading this is not likely to be relevant to us, but could be valuable in more rural and remote areas.

Government has mandated local authorities to locate and communicate with those Covid confirmed people and their contacts that the national system has not been able to reach. As a result Reading Public health has assembled a team of contact tracers who will start work before the end of October. This was revealed incidentally in a discussion of Reading Borough Council's risk register, It is at 1 hour and 39 minutes into the meeting whose recording can be found here. Unfortunately, Reading Public Health does not receive contact details for all of those required to self-isolate, so it cannot support, encourage or monitor self-isolation for those people.

Indepedent SAGE on 30th October cited this graph on the ineffectiveness of the "NHS" test, trace, isolate and support system.

Reading's Public Health Consultant, David Munday, has recorded a message about Tier 4 for all residents of Reading . .... Here is an earlier message on moving from lockdown into tier two. and here is his first recorded message .

The Independent scientific advisory body Independent SAGE, convened by former Chief Scientific Adviser Sir David King, has proposed a six-week plan for England to control the coronavirus (see the indie_SAGE youtube channel.) The plan proposes a short "Circuit Breaker" of 2 to 3 weeks ( as advised by official SAGE) including:

1. Closure of schools to coincide with half term
2. No indoor household mixing outside of support bubbles
3. Closure of non-essential retail and business
4. Reinstate 2m physical distancing
5. Work at home where at all possible
6. Closure of leisure and hospitality sectors(takeaways allowed)
7. Closure of places of worship
8. No overnight stays away from home
9. All university teaching online
10. Up to 6 people can meet outside in public places

Then another 3 to 4 weeks of national restriction to rapidly reduce new cases, hospital admissions and deaths. Some restrictions will remain to keep R below 1 while allowing schools to open (adapted from advice from official SAGE). Restrictions will include:

1. No indoor household mixing outside of support bubbles.
2. Reinstate 2m phsyical distancing.
3. Work at home where at all possible,
4. Closure of leisure and hospitality sectors (takeaways allowed)
5. All university teaching online unless face-to-fce teaching absolutely essential.
6. Up to 6 people can meet outside in public spaces
7. Secondary school pupils to wear face coverings in classroom

For all six weeks there will be measures to "build the public health scaffolding to support exit from restrictions".

1. Financial support for all those impacted by restrictions, including original furlough scheme and support for self-employed for affected workers and businesses.
2. Immediate major reform of Test and Trace, including restructuring of testing infrastructure, contact tracing and wrap-around-support for isolation.
3. Comprehensive reset of the Government communications strategy that explains measures, is clear and consistent, avoids blame and treats the public as a partner rather than as a problem.

South Reading Patient Voice meets online at 6pm on Wednesday 21st October. We are hoping that we will have a speaker on developing the new Health and Wellbeing strategy, but if not we have plenty else to discuss, including the future of the Walk-In centre, the Independent Sage 6-week plan for tacking the Coronavirus Crisis, a local Covid-19 testing station and more. We will also have news from local Patient Participation Groups and Healthwatch and a report from the Primary Care Commissioning Committee meeting.