Dear Brother / Sister
OFFICIAL GUIDANCE FOR AMBULANCE TRUSTS INCLUDING PPE - VEHICLE HYGIENE MANAGEMENT
Public Health England (PHE) published guidance for AMBULANCE TRUSTS on 13 March 2020. The guidance is wide-ranging and though produced for ambulance trusts in respect of ambulance personnel, there is a lot of read-across in respect of measures that fire and rescue services should be putting in place to protect firefighters whose health and safety is no less important than that of our brothers and sisters who work for ambulance trusts (and equivalents).
Members may wish to review the guidance to ensure that you are aware of the current advice. This circular does not replicate or paraphrase the guidance but draws members’ attention to the fact that it has been issued. The advice is extracted from the following webpage:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-guidance-for-ambulance-trusts/covid-19-guidance-for-ambulance-trusts
You will note that the guidance refers to PHEs advice re PHE guidance for assessing possible cases. This will be provided to members in a separate all members circular.
Whilst the approaches by governments to certain aspects of how they are responding to Covid-19 varies slightly, the advice provided to the public differs in style rather than content.
Fire and rescue services will have issued information to personnel, however with the fast-moving nature of the current crisis, the volume of information being published, and the changes to the way that fire and rescue services are having to operate due to the guidance issued by the governments in the UK, there is a likelihood of such information not being updated as quickly as any of us would have liked.
We hope this will be of assistance to members.
Best wishes.
Yours fraternally
ANDY DARK
Assistant General Secretary
