NHS: Telephone Services
(asked on 24th March 2020) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he plans to make operational the NHS telephone helpline for the 1.5 million most at-risk people who have been told to stay at home during the covid-19 outbreak.
From 21 March, letters were sent out from general practices to the 1.5 million people considered to be most medically at-risk from COVID-19, informing them that they should stay at home and avoid all face-to-face contact for a period of at least 12 weeks.
The Government have set up a National Shielding Helpline, which is a support service that will contact those who have received letters but not responded by telephone to ensure that their food and wellbeing support needs are being met. The helpline makes outbound calls only and does not accept inbound calls. This is already operational.
On 1 April 2020, NHS England published Frequently Asked Questions for patients at highest clinical risk from COVID-19 which is available at the following link: