From our Swindon correspondent:
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.
The language we use matters - it provides clarity to our own thoughts and enables…
It is now generally acknowledged that the structure of the NHS needs to be overhauled…
In the film Apollo 13, a loss of oxygen causes the crew to start inadvertently…
There's an idea out there which seems intuitive but then so many ideas do seem…
When we think about the darkly opaque goals of modern central bankers as they relate…
As the papers recently filled with the distressing images of desperate souls looking to escape…
View Comments
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 well, in which case see below, normal procedures have been changed; or maybe the Drapers trade magazine has got it wrong (journalists do, on occasion). But the EU took swift action to deal with the crisis by suspending normal procedures for cross border standards:
"...(24) Accordingly, to address the shortage of PPE necessary in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak, where non-CE marked PPE are intended to enter the EU market, the relevant market surveillance authorities should evaluate the products and, if they are found to be compliant with the essential health and safety requirements laid down by the relevant Regulation should take measures allowing the placing of such PPE on the Union market for a limited period of time or while the conformity assessment procedure with the notified body is being carried out. In order to ensure that such products can be made available in other Member States and in view of the importance to ensure an efficient exchange of information as well as a coordinated response to all threats to the citizens’ health and safety, it is appropriate that the market surveillance authority carrying out such an evaluation communicates its decision to other Member States authorities and to the Commission through the regular market surveillance information exchange channels..." Etc etc.
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 to travel too and from hospital? What happened to infection control protocol and best practice?
By the by: annual global ‘flu deaths ~ 500 000, global deaths from the Corvid panicdemic to date, 100 000. (WHO figures.) it will have to go some to catch up.
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 class of people who are employed to sit between the producers and consumers, whose job and entire justification for existence is to tell people what they must and mustn't do.
All these people haven't been thrown out of their jobs. Yet. And it's their job to stop people using items without CE marks. They will get sacked if they don't. unless they are given formal dispensation to allow non-CE marked items through, disobeying rules will mean the end of their careers. Tim is essentially asking such people to recognise that they are worse than useless, and sack themselves.
Just not going to happen...
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!