From our Swindon correspondent:
OK, not just firing. Their home and lands taken from them, thrown in to the Tiber in a bag with a wild animal.
From Draper’s
As the front-line fight against the Covid-19 coronavirus intensifies, UK suppliers and manufacturers have been quick to offer their services to the NHS for the production of personal protective equipment (PPE). These are gowns, masks, aprons and other items that help protect medical staff from infection while treating coronavirus patients.
However, several fashion suppliers are wondering why they are not permitted to help amid the pandemic.
“Some UK suppliers were going to make scrubs and growns, but are no longer able to as they have received a document from the government stating they must have a CE certification [a certification mark that indicates conformity with health, safety, and environmental protection standards for products sold within the European Economic Area] and be tested also”, one UK fashion supplier told Drapers.
No, you really don’t. These are standards, often rather bullshitty standards that gold plate everything for normal times. They often cost us all money, but as the extra sums are fairly small no-one notices, and there’s plenty of supply. But these aren’t normal times. We don’t have plenty of supply. You put the CE certification in the shredder and get some people to write a standard that is sufficient to make a safe, usable gown or scrubs for medical staff and nothing more. Have a team to check the quality when they come in and pay if they’re up to spec.
It really beggars belief that the NHS can’t do this.
Well quite. And the EU said as much a month ago (13 March). After all, the EU is only interested in stuff which is going to circulate freely across the single market. You don’t even have to put the EU cert in the shredder. Anything made just for the UK market doesn’t have to have any CE cert whatever. No idea why the NHS are making a fuss about scrubs, then. (Can understand why they’d want to be sure that respirator masks or anything more complicated met minimum NHS standards). Maybe the manufacturers want to make stuff for export as… Read more »
And non-sterile Class 1 stuff is self certification. You keep paperwork, have good manufacturing practice and slap CE Mark on. CE Certification is largely meaningless anyway.
‘ Anything made just for the UK market doesn’t have to have any CE cert whatever. ’
Yes it does because EC Directives were enacted into British Law and UK has decided to keep what it got from the EU, but may diverge in the future if EU introduces new regs. British Law therefore requires CE Mark, unless repealed by Parliament.
Well then, let’s leave Virusago to decide which of his sacred cows should be slaughtered; the EU or the NHS. For it certainly isn’t the manufacturer holding up the process here.
“It really beggars belief that the NHS can’t do this.”
I disagree, their position is entirely predictable.
What’s not to believe? This is the organisation that each and every years kills at least as many (and probably far more) though avoidable mistakes than COVID has so far killed.
Er… gowns, masks, gloves are to protect patients from infection from staff not the other way round. Gloves and aprons do protect staff from unpleasant stuff like body fluids/waste but these should not be required for ‘flu victims any more than other patients. Each Winter NHS deals with many more ‘flu and pneumonia cases than currently allegedly due to the plague. 2017/2018 season was 40 000. Did they run out of PPE back the? So what is going on? And how many plague victims were already in hospital and got their dose there? And… are nurses routinely wearing their uniforms… Read more »
I’m working right now on manufacture of home-made PPE visors, to be assembed on kitchen tables in batches of 500 or so. A cross between Adam Smith’s pin factory and Burke’s little platoons.
I offered them to my local hospitals, but they turned them down, explicitly saying they could not accept them if they were not CE marked.
So I’m going to offer them to other people at risk- working in care homes, shops, sorting offices etc.
And… in the absence of anything better… this lady has had a very good idea.
https://twitter.com/TheBrexit_Daily/status/1248144487085375489
I suspect that there are very few places where there is any great shortage, and the journalists are just exaggerating for effect….
At my sister’s GP practice, they’ve been given 3D printed head bands with four knobs to hold an acetate sheet that’s had appropriate holes punched in it. The sheet can be changed as often as necessary. No idea if they’re CE-marked or not. 🙂
And I keep hearing reports of medical people saying “We’re waiting for the government to…”
Why???? *YOU’RE* the front-line medical chaps, *YOU* do it.
“…But these aren’t normal times. We don’t have plenty of supply. You put the CE certification in the shredder and get some people to write a standard that is sufficient to make a safe, usable gown or scrubs for medical staff and nothing more….” Everyone here seems to be missing the point. The problem is NOT that both the EU and the UK government have sets of rules which prevent rapid action. The problem is that we have built such rules into our management structures, and have not built in the flexibility to override them. There is now a growing… Read more »
I don’t particularly care if that’s the person on the ground ticking boxes. I’m saying that someone, at some level, should have put that certification in the shredder early on.
Tim, at this time of crisis we need MOAR regulation enforced with even MOAR vigour than ever. CF: Derbyshire constabulary.
Get with the program and stop being a covidiot!