A CARE provider from Basingstoke says that they are just days away from running out of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

Debbie Brook, a supervisor at Maycare, says that PPE is "non-existent" in the supply chain and that she and other staff are "totally stressed" about the situation.

If they don't get a delivery over the weekend, Debbie says that she doesn't know what will happen on Monday, adding: "It's a scary thought that we might not have all the PPE we need to care for our service users."

It comes after the government has been criticised for not ensuring that hospitals and GP surgeries have sufficient equipment to ensure that doctors and nurses are safe when treating patients suffering from Covid-19.

The supply chain has suffered a serious squeeze since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, with hospitals, GP surgeries, care homes, care providers and all other branches of the health service needing more.

And Debbie says now that it's got to the point where their stockpiles are running dangerously low, meaning that they may not have enough equipment to go around next week.

"I'm hoping that we will get a delivery over the weekend, because they can deliver out of hours. I don't know on Monday what will happen [if we don't receive the supplies].

"It's something you don't even want to think about."

This is having a detrimental effect on staff's mental health, with Debbie saying that they're worried about running out of PPE and either being exposed to the virus or not being able to care for their clients.

"They're all worried," she told the Gazette. "They're out there in the community, some have left because of the problems with PPE and they're not willing to put themselves at risk if we can't give it to them, which puts extra stress on the office because we're trying to run a service with less carers.

"That in turn puts a strain on everyone else that's working for us. We don't get tested for Covid-19, we have to cope with carers if they have been in contact with someone [with coronavirus symptoms], they go off and self-isolate for two weeks, so the workforce is down.

"To an extent I feel safe because we haven't actually got anybody with Covid-19 yet. At the moment I feel fairly safe, but when our supplies run low we're not going to be able to send the carers out because we won't be given the right PPE to do it. It then puts these people at risk of having to go into hospitals or care homes."

The company, who do 1,300 calls a week and employ more than 30 carers, were given a delivery of 300 face masks by the NHS in the last few weeks. They have also been given some hand sanitiser from the family of a former client and an order made six weeks ago with their usual supplier finally arrived.

However, these deliveries are not lasting long. Yesterday, the government updated its advice for the usage of PPE, with aprons and gloves needing to be used for every visit. It must also be disposed of "after each patient and/or following completion of a procedure, task, or session". Additionally, face masks are now compulsory for all clients over 70.

Referring to the deliveries, Debbie continued: "These need to keep on coming; it’s not good sending us one order of PPE and thinking that’s it.

"We are using an extortionate amount at the moment. We’re changing gloves two or three times in a call, aprons for different tasks, face masks for every client.

"I’m not 100 per cent sure when this is coming and what quantity this is coming in. If it’s anything like the face masks, it’ll be enough to get us through a couple of days.

"A lot of our service users have insisted that carers wear face masks because they’re frightened and scared. The carers are frightened as well because they don’t know what they’re going into."

Debbie added that she felt that care providers were considered "the lowest of the low".

"I think it’s appalling that [the government] could consider that people like homecare providers, whose carers work long hours and work darn hard to keep the people in their own home which is where they want to be, to be considered not important when it comes to providing us with PPE, I think that we feel sometimes that we are the lowest of the low.

"Everybody gets thought about before us, and then it’s ‘oh yes, the homecare workers, they need stuff as well’.

"I think the NHS are doing a wonderful job, they are coping under terrific strain with the Covid-19 outbreak. But we’re also coping under strain because we’re sending carers out without the correct PPE.

"As a care provider, we can’t police who goes in and out of people’s homes, but the hospitals have the advantage that they can say ‘well you can’t come in’.

"We are very much out there on our own not knowing who our service users have had contact with during the day, and just hoping against hope that we’re going to be okay."

According to the government, in the past two weeks the NHS Supply Chain have delivered 397 million pieces of PPE equipment including, FFP3 masks, surgical masks and other PPE equipment to NHS trusts and 58,000 healthcare settings including GPs, pharmacies and community providers.

On Wednesday, NHS Supply Chain delivered more than 5 million aprons, 1 million FFP3 face masks, 6 million surgical masks and 21 million gloves to the NHS. In total over 45.5 million units of PPE were delivered to 280 trusts and providers.

Debbie added that they are not putting their staff or clients at risk.

At this evening's daily briefing from Downing Street, Health Secretary Matt Hancock addressed the issue of PPE supplies to care homes and providers.

He said that it was a "priority", adding: "It is incredibly important to me that we get the PPE to those working in social care as well as the NHS. We will deliver that PPE into social care. I know that it is challenging.

"The priority of getting the right PPE to social care is exactly the same as the NHS."