Friday 03 December 2021
The Clinical Helpline will be operating new opening hours from today (Friday 3 December). The Helpline will be open 7am until 8pm every weekday, and 8am until 8pm on weekends. The Helpline continues to see a high volume of calls, but the calls are significantly lower after 8pm and before 7am. Therefore, to best use the staffing resources available, the Helpline is changing its opening hours to concentrate on its busiest times.
Call volumes are monitored and where there are very busy periods, additional resources will be used to help manage waiting times.
It continues to be incredibly important for anyone experiencing COVID-19 symptoms to stay at home and report their symptoms so a PCR test can be arranged. This includes those who have a negative Lateral Flow Test result. Anyone who experiencing very severe symptoms and needs emergency care should call 999 which continues to be available 24 hours a day.
COVID-19 Response Director Richard Evans said:
"We need to make sure we're using our teams as efficiently and effectively as possible. Currently we spread the staff who work on our clinical helpline across 24 hours, but this means they are working at times which are very quiet and we have fewer resources available at busier times, and so we've taken the decision to concentrate our opening hours on when we see the vast majority of calls."
The Clinical Helpline can be contacted on 01481 220001 or 01481 220002.
