Covid hotspot Residents’ anger at ‘selfish’ protesters as cases soar
THE Co-op was not exactly packed, but there was a steady trickle of people putting on their masks and heading inside.
The store in Bedminster Down, is one of Co-op’s smaller ones, with narrow aisles and cheerful staff greeting familiar customers, even behind the masks.
On the other side of the road, watching the comings and goings was Linda Rogers, standing at her garden gate with her partner Dave Wall on the path – chatting to her daughter Jackie, who had popped by to say hello.
Jackie kept her distance, didn’t go in and their conversation, as it has been since the start of the second lockdown, was from pavement to path.
Linda lives on Bishopsworth Road, the main spine of Bedminster Down, the road running northsouth connecting the area to Bedminster to the north and Bishopsworth to the south.
And as of yesterday morning, it is an area with one of the highest rates of coronavirus cases in the country.
The Government’s latest figures show cases are increasing across Bristol, but in this area, it’s a standout rise.
In the first week of lockdown – the seven days from the day after lockdown began on Friday, November 6, to the end of Thursday, November 12 – a total of 78 people tested positive for coronavirus in this area.
The Government’s data breaks up England into what are known as Middle Super Output Areas, and counts cases in them. These MSOAs are slightly smaller than council wards, and have an average of 7,000 people living in each.
The one where Linda and her daughter Jackie live is called Bishopsworth MSOA, and contains around 5,935 residents. Although it’s called Bishopsworth, it’s really Bedminster Down - stretching down either side of Bishopsworth Road from the Malago River in the Manor Woods Valley park on the eastern border, to Bedminster Down’s open space on the western side.
The 78 people who tested positive here in the first week of lockdown represents one positive case for every 76 man, woman and child in the area. And that’s on top of the week before that.
But Bedminster Down’s sudden coronavirus surge is a surprise to everyone – Bristol, and south Bristol in particular, got off comparatively lightly considering the levels of coronavirus in other parts of the country in the first wave.
But the second wave is here now, and hitting hard.
The Government creates a level average of cases per 100,000 people for each MSOA, and Bishopsworth’s 78 cases and relatively small population means that the case rate here is three times higher than the rest of Bristol, and four times higher than the national average.
The statistics are stark. On Monday, there were only six areas of England – in Preston, Batley and Hull – with higher case rates than Bishopsworth. On Wednesday, new figures saw the case rate in this
The students came back into the city centre, and once it’s in the centre it spreads out I suppose. And then you’ve got those idiots going on this march without wearing face masks and all getting close together – it doesn’t help matters at all
Linda Rogers
If it all proves to be some fake thing and all you’ve had to do is wear a mask, then it’s no hardship, but if it’s real then wearing a mask can really help stop it
Dog walker
corner of BS13 rise again, to 1,314 cases per 1,000. It’s the highest rate in southern England, the highest rate Bristol has seen yet, and could be the second highest in the country.
There’s an area in the middle of Preston with a case rate over 2,000, but all the others that were higher on Monday have been surpassed by Bishopsworth MSOA’s new rate.
No one appears quite sure why Bishopsworth MSOA is so high. It could be a statistical anomaly, just from the way the MSOAs are divided up. Bristol City Council said it had no evidence of a particular source for the outbreak – there are no single large employers here with a host of cases, no evidence of blanket testing that could have produced positive tests in asymptomatic people.
A month ago, only four people tested positive for Covid-19 in the middle week of October. Before that, there were no cases at all for months. Neighbouring areas like Headley Park, Highridge, Ashton and Bedminster have seen rises, but not on the scale of Bedminster Down.
The news of Bedminster Down’s unwanted place on a Covid hotspot league table is a shock to Linda, Jackie and Dave. “It’s a surprise, it seemed we’d not really had it round here before now,” said Linda.
“The students came back into the city centre, and once it’s in the centre it spreads out I suppose. And then you’ve got those idiots going on this march without wearing face masks and all getting close together on Saturday - it doesn’t help matters at all,” she added.
Among the passers-by and people queueing for shops in Bedminster Down on Wednesday, there was a great deal of anger about the anti-lockdown protest march that took place on Saturday in the city centre.
Everyone had seen the TV news reports, or the videos on Bristol Live, and virtually everyone we spoke to expressed their fury at the marchers.
“It’s disgusting, they shouldn’t be given NHS treatment if they went on that march,” said one woman, walking her dog out of Manor Woods Valley Park, who declined to be named.
“Those selfish people, that’s all they are. If it all proves to be some fake thing and all you’ve had to do is wear a mask, then it’s no hardship, but if it’s real then wearing a mask can really help stop it,” she said.
Her fellow dog walker, who also declined to be named, said she’d had coronavirus herself, back at the start of the first wave in March.
“I came back from skiing with some friends in Austria, and four or five of us had it. I didn’t have a test at the time, because they weren’t testing, but I’ve since had the antibody test and I had it,” she said.
“I isolated, and it was awful. For all those people who say it’s nothing serious, they need to realise. I couldn’t get off the settee for a week, and I still do get tired out easily now.”
As local residents try to fathom why their area is such a coronavirus hotspot, attention has turned to the local schools.
This area has two large schools based right in the middle of the Bishopsworth MSOA - Cheddar Grove Primary, and Bedminster Down secondary school. Both have been badly hit by Covid-19 since returning from half term.
At Cheddar Grove, cases have come on an almost daily basis among children, but mainly the teachers.
The school has tried to keep pupils separated, in year groups, but the number of cases there now mean that five year groups - about two-thirds of the school - are off.
The school is still open, however, with the nursery side, the Reception Year and Year 4 still attending lessons.
The area’s main secondary school, Bedminster Down, takes students from a much wider area than just the MSOA it is located in.
But cases there are on the increase, with staff also affected.
The month began there with a Year 9 student testing positive, followed this week by the news that a Year 11 student had also tested positive.
The increasing numbers of local children staying at home has been noticed at Dev Convenience Store, where Bhumi Patel said her customers are worried about the rising cases.
“We sanitise everything here every couple of hours, we tell all our customers to wear masks, and only touch what they want to buy,” she said.
“Our business has been very affected, customers are buying things in bulk, getting supermarket deliveries and staying at home. There’s been a big loss of people coming in, and the school rush isn’t as big anymore.”
On the border where Bishopsworth and Highridge meet another MSOA, Headley Park, the queue for the only chemist in the area always had a handful of people, spaced out on the pavement outside.
Joining the queue was Jennifer Sherwood who, like many in this corner of south Bristol, was furious at the scenes she saw on television of the anti-lockdown protest in the city centre.
“I know three people who have it now, just in the last fortnight, one a man in his 40s, and two in their 60s,” she said.
“I’m worried about it anyway, but when you hear there’s a lot of cases around here, it’s even more worrying,” she added.
“And then when you see those people protesting about it, well they’ve got to be off their tree to do something like that – they all ought to be fined,” she added.
Another man, Norman Thorne, was more philosophical.
“I live on my own and I mind my own business, I don’t really see anyone and keep myself to myself, so hopefully I’ll be alright, I’ve never really thought about it,” he said.
Norman lives in Headley Park, the area on the other side of the Manor Woods Valley, where the case rate is a mere 407 per 100,000 – three and a half times less than across the Malago.
“What it is, it is,” he said, philosophically. “It’s about time the people who are getting paid to sort something out about this, did something about it – they say a lot and does nothing, as far as I can see.”