COVID-19 Guidance

Changes to the Bolton Covid-19 Vaccination programme – Covid-19 Latest Update

Order coronavirus (COVID-19) rapid lateral flow tests

Use this service to order free packs of rapid lateral flow tests to be sent to your home.

Who this service is for

You can only use this service if:

you do not have coronavirus (COVID-19) symptoms

you’re 11 or older

you have not been told to self-isolate

you cannot get tests from your work, school, college or university (ask them for rapid lateral flow tests)

https://www.gov.uk/order-coronavirus-rapid-lateral-flow-tests

NHS APP

https://www.nhs.uk/apps-library/nhs-app/

Owned and run by the NHS, the NHS App is a simple and secure way to access a range of NHS services on your smartphone or tablet.

NHS COVID-19

https://www.nhs.uk/apps-library/nhs-covid-19/

Protect your loved ones with the official NHS COVID-19 contact tracing app for England and Wales.  It’s the easiest and fastest way of knowing whether you’re at risk from Coronavirus.  The quicker you know, the sooner you can alert your loved ones, and your community.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Guidance – https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus

Dear members, Please click on the link below to read the social distancing guide in Gujarati,

Guidance on social_distancing in Gujarati

Basic guides

• Wash your hands Frequently. If you live with people who have underlying health conditions or are very young/very old, etc, please take a shower after you have been outside your home from shopping, etc
• If you have been out shopping etc, then change all your clothes and put the ones you were wearing straight into the washing machine before you take your shower.
• Be very Cautious of the Gov.uk/HMRC tax or relief refunds
• Coronavirus checking kits/protection such as hand gel and face masks
• NHS goodwill gestures
• Refunds on holidays/travel/airline companies
• Mortgage/rent relief emails
• Services offering diagnosis
• Downloading links to apps that track the virus
• Campaigns raising money for research into cures and funds for victims
• Money transfer requests to victims of the virus
• Information regarding hospitals in affected areas
• Parcel shipping services or cancellation
• School refunds on free school meals/after school clubs
• Services offering support on insurance refunds/pay-out
• Investment opportunities

Holiday Refunds

A new one that is coming around is all around how you might be able to claim back monies paid for holidays you have already booked. Please only contact your travel company and/or your travel insurance provider directly. DO NOT CLICK ON LINKS WITHIN MESSAGES, even if they look like they are from your bank, insurance company, travel company. Especially do not click on links within emails where you do not recognise the sender.

The following is a list of Scams that have been identified by National Trading Standards, UK: COVID-19 scams identified include:

Doorstep crime
• Criminals targeting older people on their doorstep and offering to do their shopping. Thieves take the money and do not return.
• Doorstep cleansing services that offer to clean drives and doorways to kill bacteria and help prevent the spread of the virus.

Online scams
• Email scams that trick people into opening malicious attachments, which put people at risk of identity theft with personal information, passwords, contacts and bank details at risk. Some of these emails have lured people to click on attachments by offering information about people in the local area who are affected by coronavirus.
• Fake online resources – such as false Coronavirus Maps – that deliver malware such as AZORult Trojan, an information stealing program which can infiltrate a variety of sensitive data. A prominent example that has deployed malware is ‘corona-virus-map[dot]com’.

Refund scams
• Companies offering fake holiday refunds for individuals who have been forced to cancel their trips. People seeking refunds should also be wary of fake websites set up to claim holiday refunds.

Counterfeit goods
• Fake sanitisers, face masks and Covid19 swabbing kits sold online and door-to-door. These products can often be dangerous and unsafe. There are reports of some potentially harmful hand sanitiser containing glutaral (or glutaraldehyde), which was banned for human use in 2014.

Telephone scams
• As more people self-isolate at home there is an increasing risk that telephone scams will also rise, including criminals claiming to be your bank, mortgage lender or utility company.

Donation scams
• There have been reports of thieves extorting money from consumers by claiming they are collecting donations for a COVID-19 ‘vaccine’.

Loan sharks
• Illegal money lenders are expected to prey on people’s financial hardship, lending money before charging extortionate interest rates and fees through threats and violence

There are lots of Scams – please be vigilant

KEY MESSAGES

DO NOT TRUST ANYONE WHO PHONES YOU IF YOU DO NOT RECOGNISE THEM, especially if they are speaking to you in Gujarati.

KEEP YOUR PERSONAL DETAILS CONFIDENTIAL AND DO NOT GIVE A STRANGER (or anybody for that matter) ANY INFORMATION OVER THE PHONE, unless you know them personally and you know you can trust them

CHECK YOUR CARD EXPIRY DATES AND ENSURE YOUR RECEIVE YOUR REPLACEMENT CARD WELL IN ADVANCE OF THE EXPIRY OF YOUR CURRENT CARD(S)

DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINKS FROM EMAILS, TEXT MESSAGES, or WHATSAPP, etc, THAT YOU DO NOT RECOGNISE, especially if they claim to be from a financial services institution. Even if you do recognise, please phone your financial institution to check whether they have sent you any message(s).

The Covid-19 pandemic is giving rise to many people who are taking undue advantage of, especially, older, non-English speaking and vulnerable people. We are aware of two of our own members who have already been subjected to scamming.

Member Real-life experiences just in the last week:

One of our elderly members received a call, and the caller was speaking to them in GUJARATI. The caller knew the names of family members and it was only because the person’s daughter in law was at home that she managed to catch the scammer before they were able to do any damage. The elderly person was taken-in because they thought that they could trust the caller because the caller was speaking to them in Gujarati and knew personal details about the family.

A member’s new debit card was intercepted, and a large bill was run up on the new card.

As we are not encouraged to collect replacement cards from our local bank, and relying more on post
Please check your Credit/Debit card expiry dates
If your new card has not been received at least four weeks before the expiry date of the current card, please contact your card provider immediately.
Your current card will have contact details printed on the back.

Another member received a fraudulent text message informing them that a new payee was created on their account and that if it was not them, they should click on the link provided