Agenda, decisions and minutes

No apologies received.

There were no declarations of interest.

The Leader welcomed Beverly Owen to the meeting in her capacity as the newly appointed Chief Executive of the Council and congratulated Mrs Owen on her appointment.

The minutes of the meeting held on 22 July 2020 were confirmed as a true record. 

The Leader presented the report, which provided an update on the Gwent Contact Tracing Service and sought Cabinet approval on the operational delivery structure, governance and finance arrangements for the service.

The Leader confirmed that in June, Cabinet received an interim report on the work that had been undertaken to establish a Local Contact Tracing Team in Newport and Cabinet endorsed the urgent action and approach taken by officers to develop and implement that temporary service.

The report endorsed by Cabinet in June recognised that the actions were just interim arrangements for the first few months, to get the service operational in an extremely short timescale.  It was recognised that a future strategy would need to be agreed in conjunction with other partners, to develop a delivery model and governance structure for the longer-term.  Welsh Government funding for the service was critical, as this could not be delivered within existing resources.

The Leader confirmed the report before Cabinet today provided an update on developments with the Gwent Contact Tracing Service and sought Cabinet approval of the proposed operational delivery structure, governance and finance arrangements for the Service.

The Leader also confirmed the Welsh Government’s Test, Trace, Protect Strategy forms a central part of their Covid-19 recovery plan.  Community contact tracing is a key element of the Strategy and Welsh Government have asked Local Authorities and Health Boards jointly to put in place contact tracing services based on health board footprints.

The Leader explained that contact tracing is carried out on receipt of a confirmed Covid-19 diagnosis, i.e., a positive test result.  The purpose is to contact someone who has tested positive to confirm that they must isolate for seven days and that their household also needs to isolate for 14 days; the contact tracer will also ask the case to share information about their recent contacts.  These contacts are traced and informed that they must isolate for 14 days; during this time daily contact will be established to monitor if they develop any symptoms.  If they do they are asked to get tested and enter the system as a new case if positive, and so on.

The report confirmed that contact tracing has been undertaken in Gwent since the beginning of June by redeployed staff within the five Local Authorities and Aneurin Bevan University Health Board (ABUHB).  All five local authorities have set up contact tracing services, which are operating in a coordinated way to ensure coverage across the region.

The service operates seven days a week and the Council’s contact tracing team is supported by local authority Environmental Health Officers across the region and by Clinical Leads, Consultants in Health Protection, and Consultants in Communicable Disease from ABUHB and Public Health Wales.

The Leader was pleased to report that Welsh Government have now confirmed funding arrangements for contact tracing.  The Cabinet Report sets out proposals for the next phase for the Gwent Contact Tracing Service moving from a redeployed workforce to a fully employed model to ensure that there  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

The Leader presented the Cabinet Work Programme.

Decision:

Cabinet agreed the updated programme.

https://youtu.be/SE_7VQbpKnI

Wednesday 16 September 2020 at 4pm.