The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Compliance and goodwill both essential for coping with virus
Isuppose we’ll know we’ve really put Covid-19 behind us when the topic stops sneaking into every conversation.
I was renewing my mobile phone contract with a girl in a call centre in England last week and between her trying to sell me insurance and me pretending to have read and understood the terms and conditions, we got to idly chatting about the deadly pandemic that’s swept the planet, upturning life as we know it. As you do in 2020.
When she noted that the number of daily UK deaths from the coronavirus had been hovering around the hundred mark, it took me a few moments to realise that a) she was right and b) she considered this a cause for optimism, since it wasn’t that long ago it was topping a thousand. Imagine. A thousand people a day; 1,172 deaths on April 20 alone. Already it’s getting hard to fathom that we did actually all go through that.
I’ll be honest, I felt a bit sorry for her. A bit smug. On this side of the border at least we’ve been accustomed to the figure being close to zero for so long it was starting to feel like we had this thing in retreat.
But we haven’t, have we? And this week the threat has landed right back at our door.
I’m writing this on Thursday and we’ve just learned there have been 77 new laboratory-confirmed cases in Scotland in the last 24 hours.
It’s the highest tally in three months and 27 of them were here in Tayside.
Just days after classrooms reopened for the first time since March three local schools – Kingspark in Dundee, Oakbank in Perth and Newhill in Blairgowrie – have reported confirmed cases.
Kingspark, which caters for children with additional support needs, is closed for deep cleaning after a number of adults tested positive. The two Perth and Kinross primaries are still open but dozens of children and staff who have been in contact with the infected individuals have been told to stay at home and quarantine. Others are having to make difficult choices, like expectant mum Jade Erskine, who told us she was taking daughter Kaitlyn out of school to protect both the six-yearold, who was born with lung problems, and her unborn child.
More alarming still is the fast developing outbreak in Coupar Angus, where cases connected to the 2 Sisters food processing plant have been multiplying as more of the 900-strong workforce come forward for testing.
Every employee and all of their family members have been ordered to isolate for 14 days and with staff commuting from across Tayside and potential links to other workplaces, health bosses are urging residents everywhere to be extra vigilant.
We’d been warned this was likely to happen. As restrictions ease and human contact increases so does the potential for transmission of the virus and it’s inevitable there will be flare-ups. But it’s jarring all the same. And while the widespread lockdown was traumatic and costly and life-changing in ways we’re still figuring out, this next phase is throwing up fresh and in some ways trickier challenges. Because it’s harder to persuade people to pull in the same direction when they’re not all in the same boat.
We’re starting to see it in Aberdeen, where the local lockdown – imposed following a cluster of cases connected to a city pub – has been extended into a third week against a background of mounting local opposition. Pubs and restaurants will remain shut and household gatherings and travel restricted after Nicola Sturgeon ruled the risk of reopening was too high. In doing so, she overrode the concerns of the city’s Labour and Conservative council leaders who had warned of the damage being done to Aberdeen’s economy and reputation as its citizens are denied the freedoms being permitted elsewhere.
There are generational divides opening up as well as the political and geographical ones.
School pupils deemed robust enough to mix with one another in classrooms are pouring out of playgrounds and into nearby high streets at lunchtimes, prompting complaints from locals in communities like Broughty Ferry who are less enthusiastic about jostling with them on their pavements.
In some cases it’s even getting personal. Mum-of-two Marti Rennie contracted coronavirus as part of the Coupar Angus cluster and told us how her ordeal has been made worse by finger-pointing and gossip on social media.
Police have been given new powers to break up house parties and councils the ability to close down venues that do not stick to the Covid-19 regulations.
They are useful tools for the authorities to have in reserve but it is co-operation not enforcement that will get us out of this crisis and care must be taken to ensure divisions and grievances do not undo the goodwill and compliance that has characterised Scotland’s response to the virus.
We are all still in this together, even if we’re moving at different speeds, and the sooner we can all go back to talking about the weather again the better life will be for all of us.