Steps in the right direction
WHY CITY COULDN’T GET OUT OF TIER 3
DESPITE weeks of falling infection rates overall, the mood music over the future of Greater Manchester’s restrictions had not pointed towards much of a relaxation yesterday.
Feedback to local level from Wednesday’s ministerial ‘Covid-O’ meeting, which decides these things, had already suggested nothing was about to change. That was the case not only here, officials were told, but across the North West as a whole.
In the event, virtually nothing shifted across the whole of England - with an easing of measures in only Bristol and Herefordshire, while a handful of southern areas were newly bumped up into Tier 3.
The Health Secretary was vague in the House of Commons about the exact reasons for the decisions announced yesterday, saying simply that the detail would be published. So as yet, it is too soon to say explicitly what triggers were applied in what way.
However in response to William Wragg, the Hazel Grove MP who had lobbied hard for Stockport to be placed into Tier 2, he did give some indication of the government’s thinking.
Asked ‘precisely what more residents in Stockport need to do in order to regain some relative freedom’, the minister responded: “We’ve got to keep getting the case rate down.
“In Stockport it’s still over 100. There’s further to go and right across Greater Manchester and the surrounding areas...those case rates have come down really quite significantly. Right across Greater Manchester and in Stockport, people have been doing the right thing.
“But the pressures on the NHS remain, partly from people who were in hospital with Covid from when the rates were really high.”
The hospital data presented at Wednesday’s Greater Manchester press conference had shown something of a mixed picture and would have formed part of the government’s consideration.
While the number of people being newly admitted due to Covid-19 had fallen slightly week on week, those being diagnosed with the virus once there had risen by more than a fifth, from 360 people to 439.
Meanwhile the total number of patients in hospital here with the virus had fallen only slightly over the previous seven days, with regional health lead Sir Richard Leese describing that trend as ‘stable’.
So while he and the mayor had both argued for us to move into Tier 2, it may be that the government was placing
more emphasis on that fact than they were.
Ministers also look at infection rates in individual areas, as well as whether they are rising or falling - and the speed of that trend.
Overall, Greater Manchester’s numbers have now been falling consistently since the start of November, dropping to around 153 cases per 100,000 from over 550.
The speed of that drop has reduced, however, over the past fortnight. Four out of ten boroughs - Oldham, Manchester, Salford and Trafford - are now seeing increases, although the scale of the rises varies.
That will have been in the minds of ministers and senior health officials too.
O ne local health official notes that
there remains a high ‘underlying prevalence’ of the virus in Greater Manchester communities, alongside ‘volatile, fluctuating numbers, especially in the over-60s’.
In some boroughs, case rates are plateauing, while there’s ‘continuing pressure in general and acute beds’.
Indeed, the shifting goalposts throughout the pandemic can make it easy to forget how high a rate of 153 cases per 100,000 people actually is. Back in the summer, officials were panicking when rates hit 50 in areas such as Blackburn and Oldham.
Public expectations may have changed over time, thanks to the myriad of confusing decisions since then, but public health officials would note that the virus itself has not.
But the other added factor in this decision - not a point the Health Secretary sought to underline in the House of Commons - is more likely to be the growing worry around Christmas.
Having announced weeks in advance that three households will be allowed to mix for five days over the festive period, ministers have been coming under growing pressure from a worried medical profession to change tack.
This week a joint editorial from the Health Service Journal and the British Medical Journal - the first in a century - warned the policy must be scrapped.
Arguments around fairness will continue, particularly where our treatment in comparison to London has been concerned.
But as we prepare to wave goodbye to 2020, the same cannot be said, yet, for its restrictions.