The Government is following the latest advice from the World Health Organization which has emphatically endorsed that people should wear non-medical face masks in public at all times. This is especially critical in those instances when social distancing cannot be maintained.
From the 24th of July it will be mandatory to wear a face covering in shops and supermarkets. People who fail to wear a face mask when requested to do so will face a fine of £100.
Further guidance on how the new regulations will be enforced will be issued in the next few days, but for now we have been advised that fines will only be issued by police and not by staff in the shops.
As with the previous ruling regarding wearing face masks on Public Transport, the government has issued certain exemptions, which include:-
1) Children under the age of 11.
2) People with breathing difficulty.
3) People who are accompanying someone who relies on lip reading.
4) People will not be required to wear masks in pubs or restaurants and people working in shops will not be required to wear masks, although most shop owners have already insisted that staff wear face coverings.
The Healthsector team are now offering for a limited time only 5 free facial masks for every new membership to the Healthsector Discounts Club.
We have settled on five masks because, although these masks are disposable and should only be used once, we have adopted a re-use guidance issued by the US to healthcare staff where PPE equipment is in short supply. The advise (which is based on the assumption that the virus looses its infectiveness after five days) suggested that each member of staff should acquire at least five pieces of equipment and use one per day in a specific order. This will ensure that their will be a sufficient time lapse for the infectious surface to become neutralised and it allows the member to re-use the equipment.

With the daily death toll falling to low double digits for the past few days the Prime Minister will announce later today further easing of restrictions. The emphasis will be on opening museums, cinemas, galleries, pubs, restaurants and hotels etc.
To achieve any meaningful easing and finally open up the UK’s hospitality and entertainment sectors the PM is expected to announce a policy change in the two metre rule which will be reduced to one metre. This in spite of “the science” which is clearly of the opinion that a one metre reduction would substantially increase the infection risk. So it would seem the ministers have finally abandoned the “follow the science “ mantra.
Interestingly there is no indication that the PM will ease restrictions on places of worship, could it be that the entire cabinet has ceased to believe in anything? God help us all.

Professor Eli Schwartz, who heads the Centre for Travel Medicine and Tropical Disease at Sheba Medical Centre, Tel Hashomer, Israel, has launched a clinical trial of the drug Ivermectin. The drug is a broad-spectrum and parasitic agent that is used to fight parasites in third-world countries has shown some positive indications in fighting viruses in general and could help “cure” COVID-19. Professor Schwartz shied away from the anti-malaria based drugs focusing instead on drugs which demonstrate strong antiviral activities and Ivermectin seemed to fit the bill. Clinical trials are now underway to determine if Ivermectin, administered to non-hospital patients with moderate cases, can reduce the viral shedding period which would allow them to test negative for the virus and leave isolation in just a few days.
To date the Professor’s team have been able to record viral clearance within six days post-intervention. If this can be established at the conclusion of the trials then Ivermectin will prove to be much more effective then Remdesivir.
Although Professor Schwartz is not looking specifically on Ivermectin ability to reduce mortality, preliminary results of a US study of Ivermectin involving patients with severe symptoms showed that it may reduce mortality.
The results of the US study was bolstered by an Australian research project which found that Ivermectin was capable of killing COVID-19 within 48 hours in a cell culture.

The antimicrobial elements found in copper, which has been well established over the past 60 years and is now, finally, receiving intense interest among the so called international scientific community because has the potential of killing SARS-Cov-2 the new strain of CaronaVirus that causes the Covid19 infections.
More importantly given copper’s aggressive antiviral activities, we thought that it should be essential for healthcare professionals to know how they can advise patients to ingest copper as a primary weapon in preventing becoming infested. This information we believe is critical because Copper is an essential trace mineral that cannot be formed by the human body. It must be ingested from dietary sources.
In that vain we include below a list of foods that one should eat in order to ingest copper, it’s a list of healthy foods and its broad enough to include meat lovers and ardent vegans:-
The best dietary sources are seafood (especially shellfish), organ meats (e.g., liver), whole grains, legumes (e.g., beans and lentils) and chocolate.
Nuts, including peanuts and pecans, are especially rich in copper, as are grains like wheat and rye, and fruits including lemons and raisins.
Other food sources include cereals, potatoes, peas, red meat, mushrooms, some dark green leafy vegetables like kale, and fruits like coconuts, papaya, and apples. Tea, rice and chicken are relatively low in copper, but can provide a reasonable amount of copper when they are consumed in significant amounts.
Eating a balanced diet with a range of foods from different food groups is the best way to avoid copper deficiency. In both developed and developing countries, adults, young children, and adolescents who consume diets of grain, millet, tuber, or rice along with legumes (beans) or small amounts of fish or meat, some fruits and vegetables, and some vegetable oil are likely to obtain adequate copper if their total food consumption is adequate in calories.
We hope this list affords our members an opportunity to for members to revise their daily diets and we in turn will offer more supplementary advice as we receive it from the experts.

In 2008 the world’s largest study of hospital surfaces made up of copper materials proved conclusively that the anti-microbial properties in copper destroyed killer bacteria and stopped the spread of infections through touch and finger-tip contamination. (Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham).
The study headed up by Professor Tom Elliott found that copper taps, toilet seats, door push plates, door handles, handrails, switches, hospital carts and so on, all but eliminated infectious micro-organisms that existed.
Lab tests showed that copper kills off MRSA, C difficle superbugs and a range of other dangerous germs including flu virus and the E coli food poisoning bug. Addionally a study led by Professor Peter Lambert at Aston University, Birmingham showed the efficacy of copper when patients were treated in rooms where touch surfaces were copperized, compared to patients treated in regular rooms. The infection rates of the patients in the copperized rooms were reduced by 48% .
In spite of the overwhelming evidence that replacing stainless steel in key touch areas with copper, not one hospital made any significant changes. Five years later York Health Economics Consortium designed a business model that showed that projects for installing anti-microbial copper touch surfaces in just IC Units would pay for themselves in less then a year.
This study was recently underscored by a US study which showed that the direct cost of treating a single patient with a hospital-acquired infection is approximately $45,000 whereas 70% of hospital-acquired infections could be eliminated by rooms being refitted with copper replacements in key touch areas at a cost of $5000.
The anti-microbial activities of copper are effective against Covid19 and immediate steps should be taken to replace key touch areas in hospitals, schools, public buildings in order to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Using copper is as critical as washing hands, sanitisation, social distancing and wearing face masks.