Doctors’ leaders back postponed health checks

As reported by BBC News, doctors’ leaders have welcomed plans to allow GPs in England to defer some services to deliver COVID booster jabs instead

Practices can postpone minor surgery and routine health checks for over-75s and new patients until 31 March. All adults in England are expected to be offered boosters by the end of January in response to the emergence of the Omicron variant. Those cases took the total for England to 104. Since then, Scotland has recorded one further case on Saturday, taking the total for the UK as a whole to 135 – including one confirmed case in Wales.

On Saturday the UK reported a further 42,848 cases of coronavirus and 127 deaths within 28 days of a positive COVID test while 372,557 booster jabs were administered on Friday.

Dr Farah Jameel, the GP committee chair of the British Medical Association, said the new measures would release GPs from “filling out paperwork” and chasing unnecessary and often undeliverable targets. She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We have been struggling with significant prevailing workforce pressures – backlog pressures, winter pressures, pandemic pressures.

“Whilst these changes make a difference and start to create some time, I think every single practice will have to look at just how much time it does release.”

Dr Jameel said the measures would allow staff to prioritise the most vulnerable patients and support the “national priority” to vaccinate people as quickly as possible. She insisted patients who were unwell or had worrying symptoms would continue to receive care from their GPs.