The new “stepping down” rules apply to NHS hospitals, GP surgeries and emergency departments.
People will still be encouraged to wear face masks and practise good hygiene.
In a letter to local health services, NHS England bosses said rules needed to “adapt” with Covid-19, because the virus was widely circulating and likely to remain endemic for some time.
Cleaning routines in England’s hospitals have also been changed.
Now that COVID is inescapable but no longer “deadly” it seems that we’ll all be exposed to the virus in some location or other and probably be infected before year-end …
I hope someone tells the receptionists at my doctors …I think they will be so disappointed they can’t shout at us anymore for stepping over those separation lines
You are all fools and are succumbing to government propaganda to take your minds off the cost of living crisis.
You do know that GP’s no longer exist ergo waiting rooms do not exist? The government wants you to spend lots of time searching for these waiting rooms that you will not have enough time to worry about food or energy bills.
I fortunately am not taken in by this stuff as I take precautions.
These days, I just stop breathing if someone gets too close to me in public!
I do still wear a mask when l feel the need but it’s getting less and less.
I do wear one if l have to go for medical appointments.
I stopped wearing mine last week although the law in Scotland only changed on Monday this week. It was very liberating and it will not be going on again. Nine times out of ten my hospital visits are throat of nose related and obviously examination means you cannot wear a mask.
I had two appointments this morning - 1 at my GP’s and another at the blood clinic, and they both still had waiting room chairs well spaced out.
What really did surprise me though, was when my GP was talking to me, he told me I didn’t have to wear my mask if I didn’t want to! (I kept it on though).
Social distancing scrapped?
Not in the Manchester Royal Eye Hospital it isn’t!
They still don’t allow the use of alternate chairs in the waiting areas, and in some locations the chairs are separated by partitions.
Having said that, the pharmacy usually has long lines of patients waiting for their prescriptions because there are insufficient seats. The ‘standees’ are within inches of each other, so I fail to see any logic in the rules.
I really do think that this nonsense has gone on for far too long, especially as it has been shown that ordinary face masks do nothing to stop emissions of breath-borne viruses anyway, and this is reflected by the fact that many of the doctors don’t wear them!
I believe it is yet another of those long established rules which cannot be rescinded simply because they have been established for so long!
