Stay Alert, Control the Virus, Save Lives – Message from Mary Evans, Suffolk County and West Suffolk District Councillor

At the end of last week, Government devolved emergency powers to county councils/upper tier authorities to empower them to intervene if there is an outbreak of coronavirus. In Suffolk, our Director of Public Health, Stuart Keeble is working with the legal team, to set out how, if it ever became necessary, this would be undertaken in Suffolk.

The county have also applied to Government to become a pilot area for local contact tracing.

Suffolk

Keep Moving Suffolk: If you’ve been enjoying walking, running or cycling during lockdown, don’t stop, you’re doing a great job! We’ve refreshed the Keep Moving Suffolk website to help you keep motivated. Take a look at http://keepmovingsuffolk.com

Business Support: Suffolk Chamber of Commerce are here to support businesses through these uncertain times. Check out the latest news, updates & support resources at https://www.suffolkchamber.co.uk/business-support/coronaviruscovid-19/

Mobile Testing Units: visit www.suffolk.gov.uk/testing for newly published dates for mobile testing units across Suffolk. These dates are for the next two weeks and are subject to change, so please check back regularly. 99.9% of households in Suffolk are located within 30 minutes drive (89% within 20 minutes) of one of our local drive-through testing sites. It is important that anyone with coronavirus symptoms starts isolating and gets tested. Tests can be booked at www.nhs.uk/coronavirus or by calling 119. If you need to get tested, but do not have a booking, our local drive-through testing sites will still aim to offer you a test if capacity is available on the day.

Current UK Situation

• As of 4pm on 19 July: 294,792 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the UK (pillar 1 and pillar 2 testing). Of those who tested positive for COVID-19 in the UK, 45,300 have died across all settings. You can view the latest UK dashboard and cases by local authority here.
• Confirmed cases in Suffolk are broken down by Districts & Boroughs as follows.
• From 2 July, the number of lab-confirmed positive cases now includes those identified by testing in all settings (pillars 1 and 2). Pillar 2 refers to tests in commercial labs working in partnership with the NHS. Previously, only Pillar 1 confirmed cases were included (tests completed in NHS labs). Due to this change many cases previously not attributed to any area are now included in area totals. This is not a recent surge in cases – the cases now being reported occurred from April onwards. As this quality of this data continues to improve, these numbers may continue to fluctuate over time, but overall, case numbers and case rates in Suffolk remain low compared to the East of England and England as a whole. 
• Compared to the previous briefing (17 July 2020) 10 extra cases have been added.  These cases were added in the last two weeks, so are not historical confirmed cases. These numbers are depicted in the two additional columns shaded in grey below.

AND A SUMMARY FROM THE PM Statement on Coronavirus

• PM statement on coronavirus: 17 July 2020 – Main points from PM’s statement include:
  • We’re continuing to make steady progress. For 3 weeks now, the number of new cases identified through testing each day has been below 1,000. The latest SAGE advice is that, across the UK, the R rate remains between 0.7 and 0.9, and the number of infections is shrinking by between 5% and 1% every day.
  • Today we are publishing our framework for containing and controlling future outbreaks in England, which will enable national and local government to work closely together.
  • From 18 July, local authorities have new powers in their areas. They will be able to close specific premises, shut public outdoor spaces, and cancel events. These powers will enable local authorities to act more quickly in response to outbreaks, where speed is paramount.
  • Next week we will publish draft regulations which clearly set out how central government can intervene more effectively at a local level. Where justified by the evidence, ministers will be able to close whole sectors or types of premises in an area, introduce local “stay at home” orders, prevent people entering or leaving defined areas, reduce the maximum size of gatherings beyond national rules, or restrict transport systems serving local areas.
  • Antigen test capacity – that’s the test which tells you if you currently have the virus – has increased 100-fold since the start of March, from fewer than 2,000 tests a day to more than 200,000 tests a day now. Publicly available data suggests we are now carrying out our tests more than anywhere else in Europe in total, and more tests than Germany, France, Italy and Spain per capita.
  • We have taken a number of steps to get the NHS ready for winter: we have massively increased the number of ventilators available to patients; we have substantially increased the pipeline of personal protective equipment for the NHS and social care; we will be rolling out the biggest ever flu vaccination programme in the history of the U.K. Furthermore, an additional £3 billion of funding to the NHS in England to get ready for winter has been confirmed. This will allow the NHS to continue to use the extra hospital capacity acquired from the independent sector and also to maintain the Nightingale hospitals until the end of March.
  • From 25 July, we have already committed to reopening the indoor gyms, pools and other sports facilities.
  • From 1 August, we will update our advice on going to work.
  • Also from 1 August, we will reopen most remaining leisure settings, namely bowling, skating rinks and casinos, and we will enable all close contact services such as beauticians to resume. Nightclubs and soft play areas will sadly need to remain closed for now – although this will be kept under review.
  • In September, schools, nurseries and colleges will be open for all children and young people on a full-time basis, as planned.
  • From October, we intend to bring back audiences in stadia and to allow conferences and other business events to recommence.
  • We have said that the shielding programme for those most at risk in England, the clinically extremely vulnerable, will be paused at the end of this month. We will stay constantly vigilant and be sure to restart shielding at any point if required.
• Millions could be vaccinated against Covid-19 as UK secures strong portfolio of promising vaccines – The UK Government has secured early access to 90 million vaccine doses from the BioNTech/Pfizer alliance and Valneva with more in the pipeline as part of its strategy to build a portfolio of promising new vaccines to protect the UK from Covid-19. In addition, treatments containing Covid-19-neutralising antibodies have been secured from AstraZeneca to protect those who cannot receive vaccines