Dear colleague

We wanted to update you on how NICE is working to support the NHS and wider health and care sector at this challenging time, and to provide more details on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting our normal ways of working.

During this period of emergency, NICE has adapted its priorities to support the NHS, local authorities and the wider health and social care sector to tackle COVID-19. We will only publish guidance that is therapeutically critical or focused on COVID-19-related issues.

The stakeholders and advisory committees involved in the development of our guidelines, standards and indicators include a large number of frontline staff. We know that their priority in this crisis is caring for patients and service users. We do not want to draw them away from this vital work.

For this reason, we have cancelled all quality standards advisory committee meetings and we will not be publishing any draft or final quality standards or indicators until further notice.

At present we are not able to confirm the revised timelines for each quality standard. We will update the NICE website with further information as soon as possible.

COVID-19 rapid guidelines

We are working closely with NHS England and NHS Improvement to develop rapid guidelines on topics relevant to the management of COVID-19. These will be published weekly and will focus on a range of clinical settings. Please visit our dedicated COVID-19 `webpage https://www.nice.org.uk/covid-19

In addition, we are producing rapid evidence reviews on medicines used to manage COVID-19 and its symptoms.

All of our COVID-19 guidelines and evidence reviews will be published on the NICE website. Enquiries about this work should be sent to nice@nice.org.uk

Kind regards,

Mark

Mark Minchin

Associate Director – Quality and Leadership

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence