“This is serious, act now” say council chiefs as Covid infection rates in Calderdale reach highest level yet

In a media briefing this week, the Courier was told by Deborah Harkins, Director of Public Health for Calderdale Council, that the borough’s Covid infection rate was 483 per 100,000, which equates to 1,022 people testing positive for the virus between November 6-12.

Council chiefs are worried by the rising infection rate and are calling on the public in Calderdale to stick to social distancing rules in order to bring the figures down.

“It’s by far the most we’ve ever had in a week, so it’s really serious,” said Ms Harkins.

“We’re now 20th in England. A couple of weeks ago we were 45th.”That’s a real worry for us.

“Last time, it was about 10 days before we saw the impact of the lockdown on the figures.

“We’re not seeing a reduction yet.

“We are getting a lot of reports of non-compliance with the lockdown rules, some small events or people leaving home.

“The purpose of the lockdown is to reduce our contact with other people.

“The decision has been made, rightly in my view, that schools need to stay open.

“If we want this lockdown to have the same impact as the first one, that means the rest of us, other than children, have to limit our social contact if it’s going to have the same impact.

“We’re not supposed to leave the house other than to go to work if we absolutely have to, to exercise, to shop for essentials, and for children to go to school.”Other than that, we shouldn’t be leaving the house.

“I would have hoped to have seen more of a slowing in the increase of the rate by now.

“If we’re going to protect the people we love, protect the NHS and stand any chance of moving out of lockdown, we’re all going to have to make a superhuman effort. Immediately, starting now.”

Council leader Coun Swift said: “I think it’s a critical point. For the prospects of it being safe for people to see each other and socialise at Christmas, the next two weeks are absolutely critical.

“It will be the data towards the end of next week that the Government will use to decide what restrictions come in next.

“I think people have got a bit blase about the seven day rates. But more than a thousand people tested positive for the virus in Calderdale last week, which I found quite stark.

“We know a proportion of those will end up in hospital, and be at serious risk of long-term health damage or death.

“It’s a stark situation we’re facing.

“I understand people are weary of the regulations and confused by the changing rules.

“What’s been damaging has been the constant discussion about ‘am I allowed to do this?’, ‘am I allowed to do that?’, ‘why am I allowed to do this but not that?’.

“The bottom line is it’s about doing the right thing, going out of the house as little as you need to and minimising your contact with other people.

“That’s how you keep your family and your neighbours safe, and that’s how we protect the NHS.

“We don’t want people to ask ‘can I do this or not?’, say ‘should I be doing this?’, ‘am I doing the right thing by my family, my neighbours and the health service?’.”

Ms Harkins acknowledged people in Calderdale may be weary of the constant restrictions, but wants to see another public effort to tackle the spread of the virus.

“People in Calderdale in the first lockdown were amazing and we had some of the lowest rates in the country at that time,” she said.

“In the summer, when we went into local restrictions, again we brought the rate right down.

“But people in Calderdale have been under restrictions for many months, longer than most areas of the country, so it’s understandable people are tired.

“There’s been quite a lot of confusion about what the rules are, which is why we’re keen to go back to basics with our messages, which is limiting contact with other people, wearing a mask indoors and if you’re told to isolate, then isolate.

“My team gets so many enquiries about people trying to find loopholes in the restrictions. We didn’t used to get that.

“We used to get people wanting to know how they could help, but now a lot of people are asking about how they can do something that they might not be able to do, or they’re not sure if the rules allow it or not.

“That’s missing the point. This is about us limiting our contact with other people.

“The people of Calderdale know how to do this.

“It’s important we as a council get really simple messages out, we have testing, local contact tracing, we work with local communities so they understand what they need to do and we support people who may be impacted by Covid.

“We know we can do it, but the longer these things go on, the more difficult it can be.

“Calderdale was affected much less seriously than other areas in the first wave, so people in Calderdale are less likely to have direct experience of knowing someone who was severely ill or who had died,

“The death rates are starting to go up and our hospital is under real pressure, staff in the hospital are working incredibly hard.

“I want us to get this under control before there’s a further deterioration of the situation.

“In the first wave, we didn’t have the same access to testing that we have now, so we have a much more accurate picture.

“But the pandemic affects different age groups at different times. In the first wave, people in hospital and care homes were being affected.

“Since then, the virus was affecting working age people.

“What we’re seeing now is high rates in people aged over 65 and the older end of working age people, who are more likely to have severe health effects, which is why it’s so important we bring this under control as quickly as we can.”

When asked what Calderdale Council was doing to try and halt the rising infection rate, Coun Swift said: “We’re getting the message out there so people understand why it’s so serious and what the right behaviours are.

“We’re pushing to try and improve test and trace. Where we’re able to do test and trace locally it’s really effective, but there’s still too much where we have to put it back into the national system instead of handling it locally.

“We want to step up the support for people who are asked to self-isolate. It’s absolutely critical that, if people test positive or they’re a contact, they isolate fully, and they understand that means staying at home, not nipping out to the shops.

“Part of that is getting the right support to them, and we’re worried that the Government’s financial scheme doesn’t help enough people.

“We’re finding across West Yorkshire that only about a third of the people applying for help actually qualify for it, which is a real challenge.

“When there are taxi drivers or people working in retail, not on fixed contracts, obviously it’s very difficult to ask them to stay at home for 14 days if they’re not getting paid.

“We’d prefer to proceed by persuasion, but where we do see flagrant breaches of the rules, we will enforce.”

Ms Harkins added: “We’re doing a lot of work to make sure that people who need to get tested do so.”We’ve never had such high rates of testing in Calderdale.

“We have local testing sites at Asda in Halifax, Todmorden, Copley and Mixenden, and we have a local service for key workers and priority groups.

“We’re one of the 67 councils getting access to rapid result tests, so we’re planning around roling those out.

“We want to focus that on targeted settings like school staff, school and college students, informal carers, home care workers and personal assistants, and certain workplaces.

“We want to gradually phase that in so people can be regularly tested, so they find out quickly if they’ve got the virus and they can isolate at home

“That gives us an opportunity to join up the testing with the support we give people to stay at home for that full period.

“The NHS will be running this itself so NHS staff will be able to get these tests.

“Calderdale introduced local contact tracing in August, and our local contact tracers reach people the national service can’t reach.

“Jointly, with national test and trace, we’re getting to 95 per cent of people who test positive to find out who they may have exposed to the virus and offer them support, which is phenomenal. That’s the highest in Yorkshire and Humber.

“But we have to pass information about people they may have exposed back to national test and trace, which means we’re not able to use our local knowledge to support and advise them.

“But we’re in discussions with the national service about improving that.

“But this local testing gives us more of an opportunity to find people that those who are infected may have been in contact with, and develop a personal isolation plan so people get ongoing support to stick to the isolation.

“There’s things like getting your shopping, taking your dog for a walk and people who end up financially disadvantaged, which we’re keen to explore through this new testing programme.

“We also have community Covid champions who talk to people about what Covid is, what the messages are and they also listen to what communities are telling them to inform our plans.

“We’re working closely with schools, care homes and workplaces to support them to be Covid secure, so their working practices keep people as safe as possible.

“And we’re working hard to be ready for when a vaccine is available, to roll it out as quickly as possible, firstly to people who work in health and social care and older people, and then rolled out to everybody else.

“It’s an enormous undertaking. Even when we start to roll the vaccine out, it’s going to be a long time before we’ve got immunity, so we’re still going to have to stick to the social distancing, be vigilant and wear masks, even when there’s a proportion of the community that have been vaccinated.”

Coun Swift said Calderdale Royal Hospital has had to cancel some planned and non-essential activities due to demands on its care from the virus.

“Unlike the first lockdown, the NHS is trying to stay open for as many activities as it can, but every time you have somebody with Covid on a ward that immediately takes a group of people out of there,” he said.

“There’s a lot of cases of people being admitted with something else and then testing positive for Covid, so that impacts on capacity.

“And the more people you get into where you need oxygen and intensive care units, that’s a real crisis point.

“If you’ve got 100 or so people with Covid in a hospital and intensive care units, your capacity to do anything else is massively reduced.

“We know a number of the thousand people who tested positive last week will end up needing hospital treatment, probably two or three weeks down the line.

“So it’s pretty likely the position for the hospital is going to get worse before it gets better.”

Ms Harkins added: “As of Monday, there were 122 people in Calderdale and Huddersfield hospitals with Covid.

“That has implications for bed capacity and what the hospital can do for everyone else.

“The pressure on our hospital is a massive challenge at the moment. Trying to carry on doing routine treatments and having those 122 Covid patients is a real challenge.”

Ms Harkins said Calderdale Council have taken part in a webinar with the Secretary of State for Health Matt Hancock to discuss plans for the mass testing roll out announced last week.

She said: “We heard from Liverpool on that call, which gave us some helpful lessons.

“At this point, we don’t want to do a Liverpool-style mass testing approach, but we want to target the testing at those groups of people and workplace settings where there’s a higher risk of people being exposed to the virus.

“This week we’re working on the plan for that. We have meetings with schools and businesses this week to start to develop a plan so we can implement it in a phased approach within the next couple of weeks.”

The national lockdown is set to be lifted on December 2, with the hope that infection rates will reduce enough for people to see their families at Christmas.

But Coun Swift said how people in Calderdale celebrate the festive season will be driven by national decisions.

“Any Government is going to be desperate to allow at least some level of family mixing over Christmas,” he said.

“But how much that is I wouldn’t like to speculate at this point, and for how long.

“What I’m most worried about for Calderdale is the scale of restrictions we might face between now and very shortly before Christmas.

“It’s one thing for them to say ‘we’ll lift restrictions for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day’ but still be on something not dissimilar to the measures we’re on now right up until then.

“Which is why the really strong message is what people do in the next 10 days will make a lot of difference to what Christmas is like.

“Even with lifted restrictions, this isn’t going to be a normal Christmas in terms of the experience running up to it.

“For those of us who have older relatives or people at risk, the real message is ‘what’s the most important, this Christmas or the prospect of seeing people in the New Year?’

“The choice is that stark in some cases.”

Ms Harkins added: “This is our chance to do as much as we can to try and make sure we’re not under really strong restrictions immediately before Christmas.”

Deborah Harkins will be taking part in a Facebook Live Q&A event on Thursday evening with Dipika Kaushal, chief executive of Voluntary Action Calderdale, Owen Williams, chief executive of the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust and Toni Williams, a consultant in health and wellbeing for Public Health England. The event is available for anyone to attend via Calderdale Council’s YouTube channel.

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