Small care providers can order PPE through new government portal

The health secretary has announced small care homes and home care providers can register on a new online portal to order critical PPE.

From this week, small care homes with 24 beds or less, home care domiciliary services with 99 clients or less and GPs can register on the PPE Portal.

This is a new online portal developed in collaboration with eBay to help primary and social care providers to order critical PPE.

Small care providers are ‘less likely to be registered with wholesalers’

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We are focussing on small care providers because our data shows that, although they account for half of all care provision, they seem to be less likely to be registered with wholesalers.

“It’s therefore important that we ensure that they have the option of quickly joining the portal should they need to.

“This forms part of our national effort to ensure critical PPE continues to be delivered to those on the frontline.”

The PPE Portal has been tested with the sector and is now being scaled up nationally over the coming weeks. During this phase of the roll-out, GPs and small residential and domiciliary social care providers will be invited to register on the portal.

Government secures over 100 new PPE contracts

The health secretary has signed deals with more than 100 new suppliers from around the world to manufacture urgently needed PPE for frontline staff. The government said it had also signed contracts to manufacture two billion PPE items in the UK.

Mr Hancock said: “Last month, I set a national challenge to ensure we continue to supply enough PPE to those on the frontline of this battle.

“We have now signed deals with over 100 suppliers across the world to secure more PPE, and at the same we have ramped up domestic production.

"We have now ordered two billion pieces of PPE from homegrown firms which is also great news for jobs and the economy, and over three billion pieces from abroad.”

Domestic production is being lead by Lord Paul Deighton, who is leading the government’s efforts to secure PPE and ensure this gets to where it is needed. As part of this, he is driving forward coordination of the end-to-end process design and manufacture of new domestic PPE supplies.

Lord Paul Deighton said: “As unprecedented demand for PPE continues around the world, British industry has stepped forward to strengthen the UK’s response and increase PPE supplies.

“We have already secured millions of PPE items through deals with British industry and continue to work with hundreds of potential manufacturers to further bolster our domestic supply chain now and in the future.”

UK production includes a deal for 70 million face masks to be made by Honeywell this month, Don & Low manufacturing 12 million metres squared of fabric for gowns over the next 6 months and Jaguar Land Rover manufacturing 14,000 visors a week for healthcare staff. The government has also secured a further 3.7 billion gloves to help meet the expected demand.

Mr Hancock said: “Worldwide demand for PPE has never been higher so I want to thank Paul [Lord Deighton] for his work in ensuring that PPE continues to be delivered to where it is needed.”

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