Health

Sefton Council is urging residents to take a Covid-19 test before meeting friends and family to enjoy games at the European Championships.

Euro 2020 kicks off a year late tonight (Friday 11^th June) and with the action coming thick and fast over the coming weeks – including England’s attempts to win the trophy – the Council wants people to enjoy the action but to do so safely.

All residents without Covid symptoms are encouraged to take up the offer of free, regular, rapid coronavirus testing.

People are asked to get a rapid test before meeting up with friends and family and visiting places like pubs, shops, hairdressers and restaurants. This will help keep everyone’s friends, family and the local community safe.

Rapid testing is available for people without symptoms at Bootle Strand and Southport’s Splash World. The Splash World site is open from 8am to 8pm seven days a week. The Bootle Strand site, the former H Samuel unit, is open 8am to 6pm Monday to Saturday and from 10am to 4pm on Sundays.

And, home test kits are widely available, from test centres, from all Sefton’s pharmacies as well as online from www.gov.uk/order-coronavirus-rapid-lateral-flow-tests

RAPID tests provide a result in as little as 30 minutes. A rapid test at home involves taking a throat & nasal swab, dropping the sample into the container supplied and then checking for the result after 20 to 30 minutes.

More information on the available testing options is available here: www.sefton.gov.uk/covid-19-in-sefton/covid-19-testing/coronavirus-testing/

Alongside the regular testing call, the Council is also urging residents to exercise caution when making plans to mix with people outside their household.

It’s always safer to meet outdoors or in well-ventilated areas. So when meeting up for games, if possible, set up a screen outside, attend an outdoor event or go to games being put on in a pub garden.

If that’s not possible ensure indoor spaces are kept well-ventilated, and everyone watching continues to follow the basic guidance including social distancing and keeping hands sanitised.

Margaret Jones, Sefton Council’s Director of Public Health, said: “This is a great time for football fans who will be excited for the tournament to start and hoping England go all the way. We want everyone to enjoy themselves but to do so safely. Our guidance on regular testing and advising caution when mixing is not about saying ‘don’t do it’, but about taking all the steps necessary to make sure you’re doing it safely. We are desperate to avoid any new local restrictions coming in.

“So, keep testing regularly and if you can, watch outdoors. If not make sure where you are is well ventilated, that you’re wearing masks when you’re moving around in a pub, that you’re sanitising and following the basic guidance.

“We have to learn to live with this virus and manage the variants and therefore it is about measures that support our residents. We hope everyone watching has a great month and that England win all their games but, most importantly, that everyone stays safe and well.”

Shaping Care Together is a programme run by local NHS leaders across West Lancashire, Formby and Southport that seeks to ‘futureproof’ NHS services by exploring new ways of working, as well as utilising money, staff and buildings to maximum effect.

It will prepare our local NHS to meet the challenges of the future – both those we know about and those that cannot be foreseen – delivering high-quality services that are affordable, efficient and, above all, safe.

It will also look at ways in which the NHS can deliver more services in the local community.

Engagement

An initial round of engagement earlier this year saw hundreds of responses from local people and groups, raising issues as diverse as the quality of hospital buildings and car parking, right the way through to how different parts of the NHS can be more joined-up and how we can best help patients to manage long-term conditions.

Chief executive of Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust, Trish Armstrong-Child, explained: “The NHS is always evolving as we make use of the latest technologies and clinical developments. So, from time to time, we need to take a detailed look at the services we provide and the resources we have and look for the best ways of delivering them in the future.

“This means putting safety at the heart of everything we do, as well as maintaining the highest possible standards. The Trust has been really successful at doing just that in recent years, but as COVID has shown us, we need to look ahead at the challenges we know about – as well as those we don’t – and prepare now.”

Challenging

She added: “We have seen over the past year just how brilliant the NHS is at responding to emergencies, so we need to ensure we are able to do that in coming years as well. Of course, we also have to work within the financial package we are given and deal with a challenging situation in terms of the national shortages of qualified staff, which are issues for the entire NHS.

“Shaping Care Together does what it says on the tin. We want to hear what people really value about the NHS. There is so much support for what we do, but we are always looking to make things even better, so we want people to fill in our questionnaire and tell us about the improvements they want us to make.”

Get involved in Shaping Care Together by completing the questionnaire.