LOCKDOWN ONE YEAR ON
How the North East has coped How our famed nightlife suffered And what we must do to crush the virus
IT’S one year ago since Boris Johnson told the nation that coronavirus is “the biggest threat this country has faced for decades”.
In a televised address on March 23, 2020, he said: “It’s vital to slow the spread of the disease. Because that is the way we reduce the number of people needing hospital treatment at any one time, so we can protect the NHS’s ability to cope – and save more lives.
“And that’s why we have been asking people to stay at home during this pandemic.”
It marked the start of the first national lockdown.
We’ve since been through two more nationwide lockdowns, one in November and another currently in force, as well as a “tiered” system of regional restrictions.
But there have still been tens of thousands of deaths. Official figure show that up to March 5, there were 146,487 deaths with Covid-19 mentioned on the death certificate across the UK.
Covid-19 has contributed to the deaths of more than 6,726 people in the North East, including 1,864 in 2021. Again, this is the number of deaths registered where coronavirus (Covid-19) was mentioned on the death certificate.
The regions with the highest death rate, once population size is taken into account, are the North West, West Midlands and North East. In fact, in the North East there have been 222 deaths for every 100,000 people in the region, which means one person in 450 has died of Covid.
In London, Government figures show the figure is 171.6 deaths per 100,000 people.
The places that suffered most as a result of coronavirus crisis are those that already had the biggest problems, according to Alice Wiseman, Director of Public Health for Gateshead.
She said: “When I look back over the last 12 months, the thing that troubles me most is the way the prepandemic inequalities in our communities have affected our response.”
Efforts to control the virus, such as lockdowns, may have been essential to save lives but they had negative effects of their own, such as increasing unemployment and poverty.
And people on lower-incomes often found it harder to obey rules, such as stopping working when they were told to self-isolate.
Ms Wiseman said: “The success or failure of our response has been predicated on everybody making sacrifices for the benefit of others, and that’s fine as long as we were all in the same position.
“But social inequality has made it very difficult for people to do what’s needed. For example poor quality overcrowded housing, insecure work and an inability to work from home.”
The North East has done “amazingly well” with the vaccination programme, she said. But she said this had been managed locally – whereas the test and trace programme, which had been less successful, was largely run centrally.
“Everybody keeps talking about how brilliant the vaccination programme is, and it is, but it’s been local NHS partners that have been given the resources and allowed to get on with it, and I think that’s a lesson.”
Labour MPs are calling for a public inquiry into the way the Government handled the pandemic. Boris Johnson has said there will be an “independent inquiry”, but has not agreed to hold a public inquiry, which would typically be overseen by a judge.
Newcastle North Labour MP Catherine McKinnell said: “A year on from our first lockdown we can all be grateful for the success of the scientists in developing, and the NHS in rolling out, the vaccine and I pay tribute to everyone involved.
“However, there have been many mistakes over the last year – decisions delayed and precautionary measures not taken – which have sadly cost lives, prolonged the restrictions and left us with one of the worst economic impacts of any major economy.
“As we hopefully emerge from lockdown, there must be a public inquiry so that we learn the lessons of what went right and what went wrong, and why. It would help save lives in future, and support those who have lost loved ones and livelihoods to make sense of what happened.”
Conservative MP Richard Holden,
who represents North West Durham, said the Government, and politicians in general, were trying to respond quickly to something they had never experienced before.
“It’s very hard when you are flying blind and trying to do the best that you can. I know that Ministers have felt that. And MPs have definitely felt that.”
Some of the Government’s critics argue it should have introduced a lockdown sooner than it did. But Mr Holden said: “At the time, opinion was much more divided over what should happen.
“This is the first global pandemic of the modern era, where we have mass air travel for example. It’s not since the end of the First World War that we’ve really seen a pandemic on this scale. Others have been relatively localised.”
He said it was hard to assess the Government’s performance while the health crisis continued, and it would become clearer in six months time how the UK had performed compared to similar countries.
But the Government had placed “a big bet on the vaccine programme has paid off massively,” he said.
Mr Holden said: “I think the majority of people are more worried than you see on social media. And what the are really worried about is the impact this will have on themselves and their communities. A lot of that worry has been reduced by the vaccine programme.”
It is true that the Government invested heavily in vaccines before it could be certain a working vaccine was even possible. The Office for National Statistics reported last year that this included upfront payments of £914million as part of five contracts, before any vaccine was approved by regulators. These payments were used to start manufacturing and to support clinical trials.
Some people would argue it’s too soon to pass judgement on the Government’s performance. But we do have some idea how Covid has affected us.
It’s sometimes said that the UK has the highest death rate in the world. This isn’t true, according to an analysis by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), but we have a higher death rate than many other European countries.
The ONS looked at excess deaths in 2020. In other words, how many people died compared to the average number of deaths between 2015 and 2019. It found Poland had the highest excess death rate in Europe, at 11.6 per cent.
To put it another way, for every 100 people you’d expect to die in normal circumstances, more than 111 people actually died in Poland in 2020.
After that came Spain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Slovenia and then the UK, with an excess death rate of 7.2%.
The impact on children, meanwhile, has been huge. A study by the National Audit Office (NAO) found that keeping pupils out of schools “is likely to have long-term adverse effects on children’s learning and development, particularly for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.”
And an investigation by the Department for Education found secondary school children in the North East had fallen 2.3 months behind, on average – which means they fell further behind than pupils in any other part of the country.
Those in the South East were 1.2 months behind. Those in the East of England and in the North West region fell 1.3 months behind.
The outgoing Children’s Commissioner for England has warned that damage to children’s mental health caused by the Covid crisis could last for years,
Anne Longfield, who stood down from the post earlier this month, warned that one in six children could have a mental health condition, and urged the Government to launch a major drive to help them, including an NHS-funded counsellor in every school.
Covid also added to the strain on local authorities. While we don’t hear much about “austerity” any more, local councils are still facing cuts.
And they weren’t helped when the Government appeared initially to promise to refund any costs they incurred due to the Covid pandemic – only later to clarify that it would only pay for work councils had specifically been asked to carry out.
This has a direct impact on local services. Newcastle City Council says Covid cost it £60million over the past 12 months, and is set to cost more in the year to come.
That’s one of the reasons it says it needs to save £40m over the next two years – on top of the £305m it has had to save since 2010.
It’s drawn up plans to cut funding for efforts to reduce obesity in the city by £900,000 a year. Other planned changes include reducing the subsidy to schools for free school meals and Universal Infant Free School Meals by 20p per meal, saving £400,000.
Of course, the pandemic has caused huge damage to the economy. More than 150,000 North East jobs were furloughed at the end of January. Chancellor Rishi Sunak, in March’s Budget statement, warned the government was spending £407 billion in support for jobs, businesses and families over two years.
At the same time, the economy has shrunk by over 10%, “the largest fall in over 200 years.”
His response is to increase taxes on profitable businesses and, over time, on working people, even those on modest salaries.
North East England Chamber of Commerce reports that many businesses are confident about the next 12 months – but firms in specific sectors such as retail and hospitality are struggling.
Chamber President Lesley Moody said: “From the initial, catastrophic economic shock we saw in the second quarter, through months of uncertainty and ever-changing restrictions, firms in the North East have been through a lot.
“The data from the start of the year shows that overall confidence, while still very low, is improving. Yet this masks enormous disparities between those sectors that have been able to return to something akin to normality and those who remain under the tightest restrictions.”