eBay has today announced it is extending its partnership with the NHS Supply Chain, the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) and its distribution partners to expand its supply of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) until the end of March 2021.
The NHS portal, first launched in April 2020 as a limited ‘emergency top-up’, will be significantly scaled to meet the extra need for PPE through the challenging winter months, and in the face of rising COVID-19 cases.
Orders on the PPE portal were previously restricted to focus on providing emergency items to the providers that needed it most. Order limits have now been updated and increased so that eligible health and social care providers across England can order PPE through the portal, free of charge, until at least March 2021.
At full service, up to 200 million items of PPE could be delivered every week to primary and social care providers* across England. The PPE portal is part of the Government’s newly-announced ‘PPE Strategy’ and intended to be used for COVID-19 health and care provision only.
The portal is built on eBay’s marketplace technology, allowing an NHS database of healthcare workers to log in and ‘order’ for a limited range of non-acute PPE via the NHS Catalogue. The PPE items are being supplied by NHS Supply Chain via the Clipper Group and despatched via Royal Mail. eBay continues to provide this service to DHSC and the NHS free of charge.
Murray Lambell, UK General Manager, eBay said: “We’ve been working with the Government and our partners on the PPE Portal since the early stages of lockdown, and as we face a second wave in the UK, we’re proud to play a small part in helping to get PPE in to the right places as part of the new national strategy.”
