Bitter taste as blighted city slides back into lockdown
LEICESTER, like the rest of England, was looking forward to easing out of lockdown on July 4.
Last night those hopes were dashed. The city of 330,000 people found itself in the ignominious position yesterday of being singled out as a hotspot for Covid-19.
Leicester, far from tasting further freedoms next weekend, slipped back into lockdown, the Government’s decision leaving a bitter taste. Health officials had identified a growing problem in the East Midlands city over the past fortnight, confirmed by widespread testing that showed one in 10 people coming back positive for the coronavirus.
Sir Peter Soulsby, the local mayor, railed against the plan, calling it “cobbled together” and insisting there was “nothing special” about the spread of the virus in Leicester.
Prof Carl Heneghan, director of Oxford University’s centre for evidencebased medicine, also weighed in, complaining the lockdown in Leicester was “unnecessary” and “over the top”.
He warned that implementing localised lockdowns was “unsustainable” in a nation as densely populated as England and urged the Health Secretary to implement a proper “track and trace” system of testing.
A Leicestershire police source said yesterday: “We are waiting to see what is happening. We don’t know how it is going to work. We really don’t know.”
Latest figures showed 866 positive cases for Covid-19 in Leicester in the two weeks to June 23 – some 29 per cent of all 2,987 positive tests since the start of the pandemic.
In the east of the city, in particular in the suburb of North Evington, the problem is thought to be at its worst, a densely-populated community of terraces and former industrial buildings. A walk-in test centre has been set up in
Spinney Hill Park – there, on Monday afternoon, men in Army uniforms and masks could be seen standing beneath a marquee, taking test samples. This is what a city looks like in the grip of a reviving, killer virus.
An extra fortnight of lockdown was met with confused frustration on the city’s streets yesterday.
Alex Richie, landlord at the The Dove pub, just inside the Leicester City Council boundary, said he had spent the last few months renovating the pub and drawing up a new menu in preparation for his grand reopening. But the a new lockdown has thrown his plans into disarray. “I’m waiting for further orders, basically,” said Mr Richie. “I’m not rushing into opening. My customers and my staff are more important than anything else. There’s only one reason that we would go into a further lockdown: [people] not following social distancing guidelines, and people need to learn.”
Down the road, over the city limit, drinking and dining out are likely to be permissible from July 4. It risks a rush from Leicester to surrounding suburbs, pushing Covid-19 into places that are so far out of reach of the disease.
Just down the road, in the village of Houghton on the Hill, at the Old Black Horse Inn, which plans to open next week, barmaid Louise said: “We’re a village pub, the landlord and landlady are friends with a lot of people in the village. People are missing not being able to come in.”
Two miles away in the more affluent Evington, Rosemary Kavanagh, 81, a local resident, said: “The rules have been confusing enough as it is; now I’m not sure where the boundary is. I think young men will still be playing football and cricket [in the parks].”
She is particularly worried that her 11-year-old granddaughter, who has recently returned to school after months away, will be forced to return home.
Amit Hansrani, who manages a fish and chip shop in the area, feared that diners might just drive to a nearby village in search of an open restaurant.
‘People have only got to walk 100 yards up the road. They will ignore the fact they can’t do it here, and will do it there’
“We’re going to lose our custom and we need cash coming in – there’s not a lot we can do.”
Dorreen Barratt, 88, who was out on a shopping trip in the area with two friends, said that any locals frustrated by lockdown have “only got to walk 100 yards up the road … people will ignore the fact they can’t do it here, and they’ll just do it where they can”.
Her 77-year-old friend, Ann, said she was worried that her family – all of whom live outside Leicester’s city limits – would not be able to visit.
In Government circles, the rise of Covid-19 cases in Leicester is being blamed on factors that have created a perfect storm. The city is home to a number of food manufacturing plants while high-density households, many housing multi-generational layers of families, are also thought to have contributed. Public Health England (PHE) produced a report, delivered yesterday to Sir Peter Soulsby, that identified an upsurge in cases and a need for a delay on easing of the lockdown.
PHE has been keen to stress that there is no single “smoking gun”. “The increase in cases in the area reflects activity in a number of settings in Leicester,” said a PHE source. Samworth Brothers, which runs a sandwich plant in the north of the city, employing 1,500 people, confirmed a “handful” of cases at its Beaumont Leys site. The city has significant Hindu and Muslim populations. Cllr Ruma Ali was reported yesterday saying the virus was spreading in areas dominated by ethnic minorities, including her own ward. She said: “It has been very hard to follow social distancing. A lot of people live with extended family and in overcrowded homes. A lot of relatives live on the same street and they should still be social distancing.”
Claudia Webbe, the Labour MP for Leicester East, urged a fresh lockdown to protect her constituency. “The Government has failed to protect our communities,” she said yesterday, “and that is why the UK has the worst coronavirus death rate in the world.”