The Reading Covid-19 Engagement Board meets again at 2pm on Friday 6th November 2020. If you want to attend please email Nicky Simpson at nicky.simpson@reading.gov.uk . If you have questions for the board please send them to Nicky Simpson at Reading Borough Council, as above, by 6pm on 30th October 2020.

The Berkshire West Primary Care Commissioning Committee meets online at 1pm on Thursday, 14th October 2020.

Berkshire Public Health has a dashboard with details. of infection around Berkshire.

The University of Reading hosts a dashboard web page with daily and weekly totals of positive Covid-19 test results at the University and much more useful information .

The Reading Health and Wellbeing Board meets online at 2pm on Friday, 9th October, The agenda and papers are attached. To attend please emails Nicky.Simpson@reading.gov.uk . Questions can be addressed in the same way. See the recording of the meeting .

A group of scientists including SAGE member Prof Susan Michie have analysed responses taken on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care in a series of 21 surveys, each of abour 2,000 people, from 5 March to 2 August. We can expect that of the order of 100 people in each survey would have had Covid-19. The report has not yet been peer-reviewed for publication. The results make depressing reading as to the overall effectiveness of our national system for suppressing Covid-19 infection. Evidently until compliance is much improved it will be necessary to have gross "lockdown" measures. ... Only 48.9% of participants (95% confidence interval 48.2% to 49.7%) identified key symptoms of COVID-19. Self-reported adherence to test, trace and isolate behaviours was low:

1. self-isolation was report by 18.2%, (95% confidence interval 16.4% to 19.9%)
2. requesting an antigen (swab) test was reported by 11.9% (95% confidence interval 10.1% to 13.8%)
3. intention to share details of close contacts was reported by 76.1% (95% confidence interval 75.4% to 76.8%)
4. quarantining was reported by 10.9% ( 95% confidence interval 7.8% to 13.9%)

These figures were largely stable over time. By contrast, intention to adhere to protective measures was much higher. Non-adherence was associate with: men, younger age groups, having a dependent child in the household, lower socio-economic grade, greater hardship during the pandemic, and working in a key sector. The authors concluded that practical support and financial reimbursement was likely to improve adherence and that targeting messaging and policies to men, younger age groups, and key workers might also be necessary. Since the surveys were taken a 500 payment for self-isolation has been introduced for those on the lowest incomes. The original paper is here .

Reading University is establishing a Covid-19 walk-in testing site in coordination with Reading Public Health. This site will provide testing for university students but also for local residents. It is not clear whether this will use any testing capacity at the University or will use the national network of Lighthouse Labs to process the results. It is expected to be ready sometime in October if given final Government approval. The top floor of Royal Berkshire Hospital Trust's Bracknell Healthspace will be made into a new Lighthouse laboratory for processing Covid-19 tests, providing additional capacity to the system. It will be operated by Surrey and Berkshire Pathology Services and the regional provider trusts. At full stretch the capacity will be for 40,000 tests a day. There will be 300 people employed at the labs while they are running.

 NHS England has reworked the data on how CCG allocations are worked out and given information for the 3 years from 2019-2023. Please see the attached document. For the data as published in 2017 see this story .

South Reading Patient Voice meets at 6pm on Wednesday 16th September online. Prof Phil Lowry will tell us something of research into Coronavirus testing at Reading University. We will hear news from PPGs, Healthwatch, major NHS providers and those attending meetings of the CCG and Reading Covid-19 Outbreak Engagement Board. Please see the attached agenda for information on joining the meeting. If interested in joining the group please contact Tom Lake, Information Officer

The Reading Covid-19 Outbreak Engagement Board will meet online via Microsoft Teams at 2pm on Friday. 4th September 2020. To attend please register with Nicky Simpson at Reading Borough Council.