Hearing Impairment: Coronavirus

(asked on 5th October 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has in place to encourage awareness of the unique problems faced by deaf people and those with hearing loss during the covid-19 outbreak.


Answered by
Helen Whately Portrait
Helen Whately
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 19th October 2020

The Government recognises the extra challenges faced by deaf people and those with hearing loss during the pandemic. We have taken several steps to address these and to raise awareness.

This includes making a clear exemption from wearing face coverings and a communications campaign to raise awareness of such exemptions. We have also made exemption documents available.

Government guidance on face coverings and exemptions was distributed to businesses and customer-facing organisations.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have procured 250,000 transparent facemasks from the company ClearMask which will be helpful for people who need to lip read.

The Public Health England Campaign Resource Centre provides a wide range of free materials to download and share on Government advice and guidance.

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