GP surgeries ‘not ready to cope with second wave of coronavirus and winter’

Dr Vinesh Patel, a GP partner, told the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on coronavirus on Wednesday that the sector was under-prepared and did not have the right support.

He said that many surgeries were in houses which could not “zone” patients properly or have appropriate infection control measures.

He added: “We have the normal usual pressures and normal conditions that overlap with symptoms that we would see for coronavirus.

“We are under-prepared in primary care of how we are going to manage those patients, we don’t have the right facilities, the right infection control facilities within primary care to manage them.

“We are now coming to the middle of September and actually if this second spike hits along with the winter pressures I don’t think primary care has been given the right support to be able to zone these patients appropriately, have the right PPE and therefore protect the services we need for patients but also to protect our staff.”

Dr Patel also told the group that many doctors were worried about supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) and some were considering leaving the profession.

When asked if the problem was about PPE, he added: “It’s partly that, it’s also about the fact we have different facilities across the country.

“Some surgeries are big enough, which have separate entrances, which may be able to zone and do things differently.

“There’s others that are still out of houses that have poor infection control, they haven’t got updated sinks or flooring.”

When asked if primary care staff felt safe and protected Dr Patel said: “Unfortunately not.”