Living with Covid-19 in Newcastle

Our plan to lead, protect, learn, and prevent.

Newcastle’s Living with Covid Plan sets out our recommendations for maintaining a public health approach to tackling Covid-19.

It takes the key features of our response to the pandemic and harnesses the lessons of our collective experience of Covid, to ensure the challenges we have faced are used to shape our response to future outbreaks of respiratory diseases, and provide a commitment to improve health outcomes for everyone who lives, works, and studies in Newcastle.

The Living with Covid Plan was approved by the Newcastle City Futures Board on Thursday 22 September 2022.

Our recommendations

The recommendations set out in the plan cover a number of key actions in different priority areas.

Supporting our residents

1. Continue to invest in service design and deliver with partners and residents to tackle health inequalities and provide better outcomes for underserved communities.
    
2. Build on the learning from our Welfare and Wellbeing offer to support residents, organisations, and officers to navigate services in an accessible, non-judgemental, inclusive, and practical way that is based on individual needs, equity and to promote resilience.
    
3. Support and develop our local food insecurity infrastructure to provide timely, appropriate, and dignified provision of food and essentials to those with barriers to access.

Supporting our settings and workforce

4. Develop workforce resilience within complex settings to build capacity, expertise, and a sense of value within essential services to protect those most vulnerable to infectious disease.
    
5. Maintain protected resource to support health protection capacity and resilience on complex settings assurance, immunisations and response preparedness and coordination.
6. Review Local Authority plans for preparing for and responding to infectious diseases and emergency preparedness
    
7. Embed and promote the national Living Safely with Respiratory principles to all routine practice in settings across Newcastle to prevent and mitigate future risks and promote inclusive spaces for all.
    
8. Produce resources and guidance for businesses to enable them to protect employees’ health and wellbeing and manage risks of potential loss of income.

Addressing inequalities

9. Develop and enhance population health and health inequalities action through workforce development, data integration, public health analysis and digital innovations across partner organisations.
    
10.  Invest in public health intelligence and population focussed analysis to design and implement services, drive service improvement, target resource and, where necessary, advocating for national policy change.
     
11. Invest in public health literacy, embedding a model for health information action and Community Champion initiatives through system-wide capacity building and development.
     
12. Contribute to regional, national, and international practice sharing opportunities, events and calls for evidence on Covid control, pandemic management, and lived experience during Covid-19.

Governance

13. Continue to ensure that specialist public health professionals lead on guidance, policy and oversight on health protection priorities.
     
14.  Set up a citywide Health Protection Assurance Board with responsibility for communicable disease control, emergency preparedness and environmental public health, embedding ongoing Covid-19 control as a key part of its approach.
     
15.  Continue to provide updated and accessible communications to residents, businesses, and employees, as well as maintaining positive working relationships with the media, to allow people to continue to make informed decisions around vaccinations and keeping themselves safe in line with the latest guidance.

More information

The Living with Covid Plan provides an update on the city’s previous Covid Control Plans, which were last updated in 2021.

The recommendations have been developed by a cross-organisational group, led by Newcastle City Council public health and supported by key partners and stakeholders (including residents and Community Champions) through a range of evaluation and engagement activities.