General Health

Thank you all for supporting us with the ‘Clap For Our Carers’. We all feel a great sense of pride being part of such a generous establishment, the NHS. We appreciate all your support and continuing to help us by stay at home so we can continue to help you.

  • As children are now home from school now, and their interest in COVID-19 will increase. It’s hard to know what to tell them. These three websites give some good guidance:
  •  We mustn’t forget that other illnesses will still happen during this time. For example, children will still get appendicitis, people will still have heart attacks and people will continue to get new symptoms. If you find yourself in a similar situation, please don’t hold back on calling your GP or 111 or 999 if appropriate. Don’t let the fear of COVID-19, aka ‘Coronaphobia’, affect your health, as the risk to life by avoiding medical services, especially in an emergency situation is likely to be greater than the risk of potentially catching COVID-19.
  • To help the NHS provide you with the best care if you need to go to hospital as a result of catching coronavirus, we ask that you prepare a single hospital bag. This should include your emergency contact, a list of the medications you take (including dose and frequency), information about your next of kin, any information on your planned care appointments and things you would need for an overnight stay (snacks, pyjamas, toothbrush, medication etc). If you have an advanced care plan, please include that.
  • It is important to keep physically active during this time, even in the home. This NHS weblink has some fantastic exercises you can do: www.nhs.uk/home-workout-videos
  • Please see the page on ‘Specific health conditions’ for more specified information.
  • We must also be aware that once this is all over there may be a sharp rise in mental health conditions, diabetes, heart disease etc. we need to do the most we can now to prevent this for us, our friends, family and neighbours.
  • There is a huge strain on community pharmacies. Please don’t go to your pharmacist if you have any symptoms of COVID-19, you should be staying at home. Lots of pharmacies are now restricting number of customers in at any one time or arranging times for medication collection. They are working harder than they ever have before. Don’t stockpile medication; it’s an unnecessary drain on an already stretched NHS and not the best use of time and resource in this crisis. Thank you for having patience with your pharmacy team.
  • Dentists are now only mainly doing emergency procedures as due to the nature of their work, there is a high risk of transmission. If you had a dental appointment and you’ve not heard from your dentist, either postpone it if it’s not urgent or contact your dentist for more advice.