What's New

UK residents will now be able to apply for a UK Global Health Insurance Card (GHIC), the Department of Health and Social Care has announced.

BSI, in its role as the UK’s National Standards Body, has published a new standard for community face coverings (BSI Flex 5555 v1.0) to help UK manufacturers, testing houses, retailers and consumers.

Hundreds of NHS maternity and neonatal leaders in England will benefit from a new £500,000 maternity leadership programme which will aim to apply lessons learned both from the pandemic and maternity safety inquiries, including the Ockenden Review.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has launched a consultation on its draft strategy, which has been developed to enable more effective regulation for the future.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has told clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) patients to continue to shield against Covid-19 even after being fully vaccinated against the virus.

In a letter setting out how it will free up practices to support Covid vaccination, NHS England has outlined a range of measures to help address GP workload in the coming months.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has approved the Covid-19 Vaccine Moderna for use in the UK on 8 January 2021 and has published information for healthcare professionals on its properties and the conditions attached to its use.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that the Government, the NHS, the Armed Forces and local and regional authorities are coming together in a national vaccine effort.

British researchers have been examining and pooling data from a wide range of international studies — including Argentina, Bangladesh, Iran, Pakistan, Spain, Egypt, India and the USA — and found that the anti-parasitic medicine Ivermectin not only reduces deaths from Covid-19 but can be used to protect doctors and nurses, as well as others who have had contact with ill people, from getting the virus.

GPs are to be paid an extra £10 for every Covid-19 vaccine dose they give to care home residents or staff, in addition to a £12.58 item-of-service fee, due additional time and resources needed to deliver the vaccination programme in care homes.