Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Updated Guidance
The UK Health Security Agency has developed a contingency plan, setting out how it will continue to oversee COVID–19. This includes ongoing focus on vaccinations and surveillance. Local authorities will not play a role in this, unless there is a significant change, for example, a vaccine-evasive variant and local authorities are putting the regional COVID-19 boards into a dormant mode. As such, the Rapid Response Hub is now no longer operational.
Should you have any queries about absence, colleagues can look on our HR webpages and students can look on the iExeter app (teaching and learning tools) and information on people who are at high risk of serious illness from COVID-19 can be found here.
UK Travel guidance can be found here and full COVID-19 guidance is on the NHS website.
Staying at home and avoiding vulnerable people when unwell whilst also keeping up to date with vaccinations, will provide our best support against COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses going forward.
If you have any queries, that can’t be found on the above webpages, please contact:
Kate Lindsell – Assistant Director UCS (Compliance and Risk) and UOE lead for public health matters via email.
Following advice from Public Health, LFD testing may continue for smaller groups of people, who will still be able to access testing via the Government website for the immediate future. These groups are:
Students on placement and colleagues accessing Healthcare settings.
We advise you to follow setting policy and order from the Government ordering system.
For colleagues or students working with human participants as part of your research, please be aware that asymptomatic testing for COVID-19 of human participants is no longer a required mitigation, though it is still a recommendation where studies are recruiting potentially vulnerable participant groups, or the researchers are vulnerable.
Participants and colleagues who fall into this category, will also currently be able to receive tests from the national arrangements. Test kits are currently available within Research Services (in the Innovation Centre) but when the stock is used or expires, the cost of testing must be considered as part of the study design, and where possible these costs should be included in any funding proposals (subject to funder terms and conditions).
As always, before data collection starts, you must receive ethical approval for these studies. Please be aware that those who have previously received approval for research with human participants must re-establish approval for any amendments and ensure that all supplementary documents (e.g. participant information and consent forms) amended due to COVID-19 and infections measures or for other reasons are also re-approved. Participant information sheet and consent form templates with sections on COVID-19 measures can be found via this link.