Back in April as the first wave of the Coronavirus pandemic hit hard, the Army, NHS and Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) came calling, looking for a partner to build a platform to distribute PPE across the nation. eBay immediately stepped up to the plate to deliver an eBay PPE Portal in record time and a host of partners came forward to help manage aspects of the project including Volo (handling updates to stock levels and tracking information for deliveries) and Clipper and Royal Mail (distribution).
Now more than 325 million items of PPE have shipped through the eBay PPE Portal, including 51 million items in the week ending on the 3rd of November.
Looking at the graph, the number of items shipped per day is accelerating significantly since the start of September – roughly when the second wave started to bite.
There are 40,000 care and health providers registered on the PPE Portal out of 55,000 invited – a 70% take up rate.
The providers registered and using the eBay NHS Portal include: 11,700 Care Homes, 7,100 Domiciliary Care Providers, 6,000 GP Practices, 5,200 Dentists, 6,650 Pharmacies, 2,300 Optometrists as well as various other sectors.
This is going to be a very long and tough winter for the country and care providers are the front line that will be called upon to go the extra mile to look after the rest of us. Having seen the shortages of PPE and difficulty in distributing it at the start of the pandemic, eBay, Volo, Clipper, Royal Mail and the Army have done an amazing job to ensure providers can easily access the supplies that they need.
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Spoiler alert: masks don’t work. Nor do those pathetic thin plastic aprons which barely cover a person’s chest/stomach area. All just for show I’m afraid.
The country is being ripped off by many over this PPE.
We are alongside a business that is renting out space to restaurant owner that is suddenly importing around 4 articulated lorries per week (and growing) full of Aprons and gloves from Turkey and then just loads them on other lorries which take them currently to Belgium.
He tried touting them all around the UK and was turned away as they do not meet the correct standards.
So he turned to Belgium then he has a chain nearly in place to Romania nd Hungary plus the Czech Republic.
He went from closed down during lockdown to turning over £750,000 per week and its growing 6 lorries here yesterday all on the back of a newly started company with a bounce back loan
some are getting rich selling useless stuff