People have behaved with care and consideration

CAN any one of us have imagined a year when we couldn’t go out, we couldn’t see our friends and family, we couldn’t hug family members and we couldn’t visit people in care homes and hospitals?

It’s been a year when we have got used to doing things we never did before.

For those of us who could work from home, video conferencing has become the norm.

We spend our lives on Zoom, we have birthday get togethers on Zoom, we do lessons with our kids on Zoom, we have meals with others on Zoom.

Some things will never change back to how they were. I used to go to London once a week. It used to be a whole day of my time to do a two-hour meeting. Now I can do this via Zoom and save the travel time for useful work.

We’ve also learnt about the value of everyone who works in the hospital – the cleaner has been as vital to keeping us safe as have doctors and nurses. We have learnt that the people serving us in the Co-op are vital to our lives.

The response from people in Portsmouth to the pandemic has been tremendous. There might have been reports of a few student parties, or too many people on the seafront, but in the main people have behaved with huge care and consideration. People have volunteered in their thousands.

Firms have adapted what they do to help people out. We have all stood patiently in queues for our turn to go into a shop.

In this pandemic we have lost over 350 Portsmouth residents – every single one of these losses has been a tragedy. The vaccines mean that even when infection rates go up again, the number of people going into Queen Alexandra Hospital will be fewer, and the number dying will be fewer, but the infection is not going away.