Minutes of the COVID19 Oversight and Engagement Board Meeting 10.15 am on Thursday 20th August 2020 - Public Session held virtually via Zoom

Present: Cllr Ian Morris – Chair (IM) Cabinet Member for Public Health and Adult Social Care, County Council Cllr Jean Addison (JAd) Borough Council James Andronov (JA) Assistant Chief Constable, Northamptonshire County Council Cllr Ruth Groome (RG) Independent Group Lead North, Northants Shadow Authority Dr David Jones (DJ) Chair, Northamptonshire Healthwatch Cllr Jonathan Nunn (JN) Leader, Northampton Borough Council Sarah Newall (SN) Public Health Communications Consultant, Northamptonshire County Council Julie Shepherd (JS) Chief Nurse, Northamptonshire Healthcare Foundation Trust Cllr Chris Stanbra (CS) Liberal Democrat Group Lead North, North Northants Shadow Unitary Authority Cllr Russell Roberts (RR) Leader, Borough Council and Leader, North Northants Shadow Unitary Authority Toby Sanders (TS) Chief Operating Officer, NHS Northamptonshire Clinical Commissioning Group Lucy Wightman (LW) Director of Public Health (DPH), Northamptonshire County Council and Director of Population Health Strategy, NHS Northamptonshire Clinical Commissioning Group Sharon Wright (SW) COVID19 Testing lead, Northamptonshire COVID19 Strategic Co-ordination Centre Cllr Ian McCord (IMc) Leader, South Northants District Council and Leader, West Northants Shadow Unitary Authority Tony Gillet (TGi) Executive Director Resources, District Council George Candler (GC) Chief Executive, Northampton Borough Council Cllr Danielle Stone (DS) Leader of the Labour Group, Northampton Borough Council James Wheeler (JW) Head of Estates and Facilities, Northamptonshire County Council Leanne Hackshall (LH) Director of Nursing and Quality, Kettering General Hospital Cllr Phil Bignell (PB) South Northants Council Rhosyn Harris (RH) Consultant in Public Health, Northamptonshire County Council Paul Hanson (PH) Democratic Services Manager, Northamptonshire County Council (Meeting Host) Nikita Wiseman (NW) Public Health Business Manager, Northamptonshire County Council (Minute Taker) Apologies:

Cllr Tom Beattie (TB) Leader, Corby Borough Council and Labour Group Lead North, North Northants Shadow Authority Cllr Chris Lofts (CL) Liberal Democrat Group Lead West, West Northants Shadow Unitary Authority Ian Vincent (IV) Chief Executive, Council Joanna Fawcus (JF) Chief Operating Officer, Kettering General Hospital Angela Hillery (AH) Chief Executive, Northamptonshire Healthcare Foundation Trust Theresa Grant (TG) Chief Executive, Northamptonshire County Council Peter Baguley (PBa) Director of Planning and sustainability, Northampton Borough Council Liam Beasley (LB) Head of Communications, Northamptonshire County Council

39/20 Welcome

The Chair opened the meeting, welcomed everyone present and summarised the apologies received.

40/20 Minutes from the previous meeting 13th August 2020

RESOLVED that: Once the references to local track and trace are amended to local test and trace on pgs. 4-5 these minutes will be signed off as an accurate record of the meeting held on the 13th August 2020.

41/20 Summary of Local Surveillance Data

 Latest report has been published and can be found on the NCC website. An increase in the number of positive cases can be seen in Northampton, and Corby, where the advice is to continue to remain careful, undertake restricted activity and maintain social distancing. If you must meet people, try to arrange this in outdoor spaces, if you need to meet people indoors, use of a face covering is recommended. Face coverings should also be worn on Public Transport. Car sharing should be avoided but if it cannot, a face covering should be worn. Continuing proper hand washing is also recommended as well as working from home where possible. These are challenging times, and due to the significant number of cases in the area (higher than average) a recommendation is in place that sporting events should not go ahead, but that if events are planned then a full risk assessment must be part of the planning or events will be restricted or prohibited.  Overview of 16 current outbreaks; 11 being managed in Care Homes, 3 in Workplace settings and 2 in Hospital/Hospices.  448 cases are currently being managed and actions continue to ensuring communications and messaging is being disseminated in appropriate formats and languages.  Some locations in the night time economy need to improve the collection of contact details to aid contact tracing  This is a challenging time for the County, everyone should and is fulfilling their roles. The importance of transparency was emphasised and it was stated that data is publicly available and easily accessible. Recent criticism of data not being shared was concluded to be inaccurate.

42/20 Situation Update

 Regarding the Greencore outbreak, LW stated that it isn’t unique in its setting and that Greencore have been supportive and cooperative. Of the 2100 employees at Greencore, those who are not furloughed or working form home have been tested. Further testing of those who tested negative is available and that anyone who is concerned has access to testing.

43/20 Testing Venue Update

 SW stated that testing at the Local Testing Sites (LTS) are going well and seeing approximately 200 people a day across Northampton, Kettering and Corby. An LTS is due to go live in Wellingborough early next week and a site covering Daventry/ is currently being scoped. East Northants is being serviced by a Mobile Testing Unit (MTU) until a suitable site can be found. Additionally there is a supplementary MTU travelling around industrial areas (Mouton Park, Grange Park, Brackmills and Swan Valley). Page 2 of 3

 Testing ongoing in Greencore - 423 tested results delayed but results of latest trance of testing expected to be received today.  Testing overnight for night shift staff in Clipper commenced.  UoN outbreak and testing underway  Regarding earlier enquiry regarding mass testing, there is no strategy currently however a national ONS study is recruiting to understand how covid-19 circulates which will give us more information on asymptomatic transmission.  MTUs in the county are placed after a bidding process, Northamptonshire currently has 2 in rotation. LTS provides more testing capacity in comparison due to LTS being in place for longer periods with longer opening hours.

44/20 Communications and Engagement Update

 Currently seeing a large volume of media requests regarding Greencore, locally, nationally and internationally, RH has been interviewed widely and LW holds twice weekly radio interviews to address the questions of the day.  There is ongoing promotion of the testing locations in Northamptonshire. Posters have been designed for the District and Boroughs and social media is being utilised to target messaging.  For BAME communities the comms cell is working with BBC Northampton who have offered translate adverts into Hindi, Punjabi, Lithuanian and Somalian.  Adverts have been prepped for Inspiration FM  A FAQ is available on the NCC website and accessibility has been reviewed.  DJ representing Healthwatch (statutory body which speaks for health and social care users), expressed appreciation of transparency and availability of information shared and the extensive public information campaign but queried the complexity in ensuring messaging is simple and consistent across different languages and media channels. SN responded that the key messages have been decided for a number of weeks and have been kept as simple as possible. All messaging have been signed off by DPH via Comms cell to ensure there is one source of information. LW added that key messages have been consistent since Northamptonshire became an area of interest, there are challenges in that the national messages included on the PHE website at times do not reflect local restrictions in place. To address this PHE have ben lobbied to recommend the public to seek advice from their local council.

45/20 AOB

 No AOB raised.

46/20 Future Meetings

 Thursday 27th August 9.00 am  Friday 4th September 10.15 am  Thursday 10th September 10.15 am  Friday 18th September 10.15 am

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