South West London CCG Annual Report and Accounts 2020/21

up test centres at St George’s Hospital, in Chessington and at Croydon University Hospital for high priority staff (for example, Intensive Care Unit and Emergency Department staff and patient facing primary care clinicians). These centres expanded to provide testing for household members of those staff, easing staffing pressures particularly on those services that were seeing a surge in activity. By the end of April 2020, we were able to extend testing for Covid-19 to our wider NHS health and care family, including social care and care homes, and were able to provide home testing kits. We also had full test centres operational in all our acute hospitals and test centres in Chessington, Twickenham, Gatwick and Greenwich. Testing became more widely available at a range of test centres and in the community throughout the year, including all clinical services having access to PCR tests for all front-line staff with symptoms and lateral flow testing twice a week for all staff to detect asymptomatic people. Recovery and the second wave As the first wave ended, we moved into a recovery phase of managing the pandemic. We changed the way we delivered health and care services so we could continue to protect and care for local people, and to ensure we were prepared for the second wave in the winter. The South West London Recovery Board lead this work and were clear that the recovery must focus on primary care, mental health and community services as well as the acute sector. Our clinical priorities during the recovery period were particularly concerned with those groups of patients who had not been seeking health advice and support during the first wave and understanding why Covid-19 had disproportionately affected people from ethnic minority groups, and those from more deprived areas. Our recovery programmes Our recovery planning continued the collaborative approach adopted in the first wave and has been led by national guidance. The South West London Recovery Board was established to: • Define the South West London recovery priorities. • Scrutinise and agree quality and clinical impact of changes. • Recommend financial investment or Annual Report and Accounts 2020/21 | 29