Sara Britcliffe

MP for Hyndburn

SINCE the national lockdown was announced by the Prime Minister last week, I have been contacted by several constituents who think this is wrong course of action.

Why, they quite reasonably ask, are we locking down now with three different vaccines approved and being rolled out?

Surely we can now just get back to normal while the vaccines are administered?

For my first article of the new year, I want to talk about the national lockdown in a little more detail and give local residents some of the statistics for our area which set out why this really was the only option available to the Government.

In order to do so, I need to talk briefly about London and the South East.

The situation in

London hospitals is truly terrifying at the moment.

There are more patients than medical staff can cope with and some very difficult and heartbreaking decisions are now having to be made by doctors and nurses every day.

The Mayor has had to declare a ‘Major Incident’, a euphemism for a Covid emergency.

Putting aside every other reason, this is absolutely not a situation we want to see locally and so we must suppress this new variant and keep as many people safe as we can.

68,000 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed nationally on the 8th January with more than 400,000 in the previous seven days.

In Lancashire, the case rate has increased by 76% in the last week; up 90% in Hyndburn and up 75% in Rossendale.

I do not want to leave you under any illusion, these case increases are being translated into more hospital admissions and, sadly, more deaths.

East Lancashire Hospital Trust tells me that, as of the 6th of January, 32.6% of all their hospital beds were occupied by Covid-19 patients.

More than 40 people sadly died in our hospitals from COVID-19 in the last week.

These numbers are stark and highlight why we must all continue to follow the lockdown restrictions. If we don’t, our local hospitals, doctors’ surgeries and paramedics could be completely overwhelmed within just a few days.

I don’t write any of this to scare you but to inform. I was elected to tell you the truth, to explain the hard choices we have to make and to act in the best interests of all the residents under my care.

There is also now, to use an over-worn phrase, light at the end of the tunnel.

The vaccines are being rolled out as we speak.

If we can all just pull together for a few more weeks the most vulnerable groups in our society will be safe, and the rates of people going into hospital and dying from coronavirus will start to drop.

This will allow us to remove the restrictions, step by step, as the vaccine is offered to the rest of the population and by the spring our lives can return to near normal.

As your MP, I ask everyone to please stick with the restrictions for just a little while longer and let’s beat the pandemic together.