Occupational health professionals are being urged to be proactive in helping employers make the transition to the government’s ‘plan B’ Covid-19 mitigation measures, especially in terms of supporting employee mental health and offering authoritative guidance and reassurance.
The Society of Occupational Medicine (SOM) has warned that there could be mental health consequences from the re-imposition of some restrictions, especially the return to home working for many and more widely expanded use of face masks.
Prime minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday confirmed a range of new measures for England designed to tackle the spread of the new Omicron variant of the virus.
These include people working from home if they can from next Monday (13 December), an extension of the legal requirement to wear a face mask in most public indoor venues, including theatres and cinemas, from today (Friday 10 December), and making the NHS Covid Pass mandatory for entry into nightclubs and other venues where large crowds gather from next week.
SOM argued that OH practitioners should lean on a range of resources, including around mental health support and home working, and promote the ‘Swiss cheese’ model for protection from transmission.
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This emphasises that no one mitigation is perfect but that several layers combined, for example social distancing, masks, handwashing, testing and tracing, ventilation, and vaccination, all add one more protective layer. Managers, in particular, should be keeping in touch with employees in the next week to explain how these changes affect them, SOM advised.
Consultant occupational and forensic psychiatrist Professor Neil Greenberg, a trustee of SOM, said: “It is evident that the understandable focus on whether Omicron is more deadly or not appears to have missed the potential mental health impacts of moving to plan B.
“Whilst the new measures are not in themselves overly restrictive, many people are likely to fear the uncertainty of the future now more than ever. There have now been multiple new measures introduced in a quick succession and the message this gives is that it is more likely than not that even more restrictive measures will be introduced in the very near future.
“In my view, there should have been much more active discussion of the mental health impacts of the new variant. Furthermore, the plan B announcement should have included active measures that the government will be putting in place to ensure that the public’s mental health, as well as physical health, needs are being considered in the planning process,” he added.
