Covid-19 frontline team supply PPE to 100 locations each day

There may be fewer flights in the sky than is normal for this time of year – but fans of flight tracking apps can’t help but have noticed that on a daily basis up to four flights a day arrive in Dublin from Beijing – all filled with personal protective equipment (PPE) for use in this country’s fight against the Covid-19 coronavirus.

The first flight from China was on Sunday March 29 and up to and including June 9, there have been a total of 223 Aer Lingus flights through the airbridge between Beijing and Dublin, bringing over mind-boggling quantities of the PPE so desperately required to enable medical and care personnel to care for patients with Covid-19, and those considered potentially infected.

Staggering quantities of gloves, masks, goggles, faceshields, guards, overalls and aprons are required, not just in hospitals and in doctors’ surgeries but in nursing homes, residential care centres, and for the HSE HomeCare teams who visit clients in their own homes.

In fact, so great are the quantities of PPE required for frontline medical staff working just in community settings, that there are 100 deliveries dispatched daily from a special distribution centre set up practically overnight in Mullingar in May to serve the six counties in the CHO 8 region – Westmeath, Offaly, Longford and Laois as well as Louth and Meath.

For every Covid or Covid-suspected patient, 12 full sets of PPE equipment are required – every day.

When the Covid pandemic got started here, however, there just wasn’t enough PPE equipment to go round, and while hospitals did have items, nursing homes found it difficult to source any of the kit required.

“Everyone thought the hit was going to be in the hospitals so they gave us the stock as we required it – that was before our Chinese stuff arrived,” says Deirdre Oman, PPE lead for CHO 8, who is overseeing the Mullingar distribution centre which has responsibility for covering the community sector – from nursing homes to health visitors.

At that stage, to meet demand, she and her colleagues in the HSE’s Older Persons’ Offices in Tullamore were quite literally packing what they could into their own cars, and dropping the packs out to the nursing homes.

“We started to box everything up and say ‘this is what we think you’re going to need’ and we then hit the road in our cars and drove the six counties making deliveries.

“We would arrive at the door, ring the doorbell and say ‘the PPE is here’ and then back off.

China flights

Because the demands were so great and supplies so precious, Deirdre recalls that it was with great anticipation that the arrival of the first flights coming from China at the end of March was awaited.

“We were waiting on that particular weekend for the flights to land. The items were brought to a central warehouse in Dublin and we were literally waiting to see what we were going to get because we had nothing,” she says.

At that stage, the entire country was being supplied directly from the national warehouse.

“We were trying to report in what areas had positive cases, but it was taking three or four days for the items to get to the units.

“So in Easter week what happened was a national committee was set up for the community sector and I am part of that committee, and we were requested to set up local distribution centres to be able to actually turn around and meet the needs of each area on an emergency basis.”

When it became clear that local distribution centres were going to have to be established, Deirdre went on an urgent hunt for a HSE premises that would be large enough both to store stock and to allow staff preparing items for distribution to be socially distanced.

Her hunt took her to Mullingar, where she found what looked like the perfect venue in the form of a local resource centre.

Once she asked could she commandeer the premises, Deirdre got not just permission, but the promise from staff working there that they would do whatever was needed to get the centre up and running.

“So we arrived here on Thursday May 7 and did our first delivery the following Tuesday,” says Deirdre, whose team includes Anne Nolan and Andy Walsh, who, like Deirdre, normally work in Older Persons’ Services in Tullamore.

Working alongside them are admin staff and drivers and staff from the resource centre, since at the moment, they are not seeing their usual clients.

“Around half of us are normally based in Tullamore and half in Mullingar,” says Deirdre.

Colleague Andy reveals that a month into the new arrangement, the staff have refined their system so well that they are now able to give their drivers specific time slots to arrive – to minimise the contact between everyone; and in the afternoons, the teams assemble the individual components that form a full kit, and pack five kits per box and prepare them for next-day delivery – or sooner if required: “We can turn around and make a delivery in literally three hours once we know an area has a positive case,” says Deirdre

“We cater just for needs in the community not hospitals or GPS,” says Deirdre – and those needs are great, considering the number of nursing homes, mental health services residences, and various other community care centres there are across the six counties.

• To follow the progress of the PPE flights from Beijing to Ireland check out: http://thelingussource.com/