Rations of personal protective equipment (PPE) from the Government’s central portal have risen for the largest GP practices, except in the case of visors.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) today updated its ordering information, which outlines weekly PPE entitlement by practice size.
The guidance said that practices with a list size of 30,000 or more have an allowance of 4,000 Type IIR masks, compared with 2,600 last month.
They can also order up to 3,000 aprons, 6,000 gloves (3,000 pairs) and 15 bottles of hand sanitiser – rising from 2,600, 5,200 (2,600 pairs) and 12 bottles respectively.
However, visor allowances for the largest practices have halved from two boxes of ‘usually 200’ last month to just 200 from today.
Meanwhile, the number of visors available to the smallest practices – with up to 5,000 patients – doubled from one box of ‘usually 50’ to 100 visors.
Rations for all practices with between 5,000 and 29,999 patients remained unchanged.
Last month, the Government extended the delivery time of orders from the PPE portal to five days – although it had initially pledged that orders would be met within 48 hours.
It announced in September that GP practices would be able to secure all of their PPE through the winter period until March next year.
Weekly GP order limits for the Government PPE portal
<5,000 patients 5,000-7,999 8,000-10,999 11,000-29,999 >30,000 Type IIR masks 200 400 500 1,100 4,000 Aprons 200 400 500 1,100 3,000 Gloves 400 (200 pairs) 800 (400 pairs) 1,000 (500 pairs) 2,200 (1,100 pairs) 6,000 (3,000 pairs) Hand hygiene 1 bottle (usually 500ml) 2 bottles (usually 500ml) 4 bottles (usually 500ml) 8 bottles (usually 500ml) 15 bottles (usually 500ml) Visors 100 100 100 200 200
