Isle of Man: Covid 111 hotline 'scaled back into advisory service'

The public are being directed away from 111 to GPs for Covid medical advice

The Manx public should no longer call the 111 hotline for Covid medical advice, the health minister has said.

The service is now only managing bookings for testing and vaccinations, as well as self-isolation guidance.

It was first established in March last year to guide people with suspected symptoms of coronavirus.

Minister David Ashford said people should now ask GPs for specific medical advice since 111 had "scaled back to more of an advisory service".

The 16 GPs, nurses, paramedics and health professionals who handled calls left the helpline at the end of September, leaving about 20 non-clinical staff to run the service.

'Natural reduction'

The health minister said that while he does see a long-term future for the hotline, it "needed to be narrowed down to make sure its of the appropriate size".

Modelled on the UK's 111 service, it was initially managed by medical staff.

Mr Ashford confirmed that "clinical element" has now been removed "because it was no longer needed".

"Even if winter pressures and case number did increase, we wouldn't necessarily still need that clinical element any more, unless we went right back to March 2020 and ended up in firm lockdowns where we were testing and tracing across the board," he said.

Mr Ashford said it is part of a "natural reduction" in Covid-related roles, with changes to the contact tracing team also likely.

"Some of the specific pandemic posts were not long-term, they were short-term contracts, and as they come up, posts will be evaluated, and posts will go", he added.