Covid ‘major incident’ now stood down
13 MONTHS ON, EMERGENCY FORUM DOWNGRADE IS A POSITIVE MOVE BUT CHIEFS SAY: BE VIGILANT
A ‘MAJOR incident’ declared at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in West Yorkshire has been stood down.
The region’s local resilience forum West Yorkshire Prepared announced it will be standing down the ‘major incident’ status that has been in place in the region for over a year.
But the group has also warned the public to remain vigilant.
After consultation with the emergency services, councils and the NHS, it was agreed the alert level in the region can be downgraded, now that activity across agencies and organisations has returned to a level that can be “safely managed”.
Dave Walton, co-chair of West Yorkshire Prepared and deputy chief fire officer of West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, said: “Declaring a major incident (on March 20, 2020) enabled us to ensure all partners were working together, sharing resources where required, and effectively dealing with and responding to challenges.”
A strategic co-ordinating group was set up, which enabled organisations to meet and agree the strategy and objectives and priorities for dealing with the pandemic locally.
Together with Public Health England, the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health and Social Care, the group has since met virtually over 130 times to discuss arising concerns, infection rates and to agree the response to tackling the pandemic in the region.
Mr Walton added: “The roll-out and success of the vaccine programme has offered a little light at the end of the tunnel, and the Government’s roadmap out of lockdown shows the path we need to stay on to ease restrictions.
“However, we are very mindful of the potential for rates of infection to increase as restrictions are relaxed so, as a multi-agency partnership, we will continue to work extremely closely together to monitor the situation, respond where necessary and offer advice to the public.
“If necessary, we will escalate the major incident once more.”
The forum said a number of factors were considered before taking the decision to stand down, and gave this update for local areas:
‘‘The vaccine rollout and the efforts of people across Kirklees mean we’ve seen a sustained reduction in the number of cases over several months. Deaths related to Covid-19 and people needing hospital treatment are also at some of the lowest levels we’ve seen for a year. But we know we can’t afford to be complacent. Our infection rates are still above the national average. We’re not out of the woods but there are plenty of reasons to be hopeful.’’
‘‘We need to remain cautious, as the virus is still in our communities and will be for some time. All of Calderdale’s cases are the Kent variant, which spreads more easily, so it’s still so important to take great care when out and about. We can all help keep infection rates down by doing the three big things – limit mixing, wear a face covering and self-isolate when necessary.’’