NO EARLY END TO LOCKDOWN
EXCLUSIVE CITY WON’T BE OUT ANY SOONER – AND NIGHTINGALE HOSPITAL STILL NEEDED – DESPITE CITY’S LOW COVID FIGURES
❝ There’s a little bit of regional variation but there’s much less because basically this is an artificial peak brought about by our activity Professor Chris Whitty
DESPITE having some of the lowest figures in the country for coronavirus cases and deaths, the Bristol region will not come out of lockdown earlier than the rest of the UK, the government has said.
Responding to questions put to him by the Bristol Post at the daily press briefing, chief medical officer for England Chris Whitty said that Bristol and the South West has “probably had the least impact from Covid-19 so far”.
But he said Bristol’s Nightingale hospital, which will be ready to receive its first patients from this weekend, was still needed in order to give the NHS muchneeded “flexibility”.
He said: “I’m absolutely delighted that Nightingale hospitals have not had to be used in great numbers and that is a sign of success.
“But the NHS is going to be under pressure from Covid for really quite a long time and having that flexibility is an additional thing we can work out and work through.”
The hospital, built at the conference centre at the University of the West of England to treat coronavirus patients needing intensive care, has a 300-bed capacity.
And during yesterday’s press briefing chief of the Defence Staff General Sir Nick Carter revealed that some combat medics had been allocated to the temporary hospital to act as nurses.
The latest figures released yesterday show that Bristol has 497 confirmed coronavirus cases.
The number of patients testing positive for the virus in South Gloucestershire stands at 288, there are 182 in Bath and North East Somerset and 175 in North Somerset.
Meanwhile the overall number of deaths in both Bristol hospitals is now 123, with 63 at UHB and 60 at North Bristol Trust.
Mr Hancock earlier told MPs that the country had “reached the peak” of the Covid-19 outbreak.
And during the daily briefing, Prof Whitty said most of the country, including Bristol, will see the maximum number of cases at roughly the same time.
But he said this was down to an “artificial peak” created by the social distancing policy.
“The actual peak of it is likely to occur in most parts of the country at really a very similar time,” he said.
“There’s a little bit of regional variation but there’s much less because basically this is an artificial peak brought about by our activity than there might have been if this had been running unmitigated, which was clearly what we were trying to avoid.”
The Government has said it is now trying to work out how measures can be eased to boost the economy and improve lives under strain by the lockdown.
But Prof Whitty told reporters that some disruptive social distancing measures would need to stay in place for at least the rest of the year, until there was a vaccine or a drug which reduced the severity of Covid-19.
And it seems that the Bristol region will not be allowed out of lockdown earlier than other parts of the country, despite having a lower number of cases.
Foreign secretary Dominic Raab, who is standing in for Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he recovers from Covid-19, said it would be “counter-productive, if not dangerous” to ease up on lockdown measures too early.
He said: “The risk right now, not just for public health but all those small businesses, is that if we move too early to ease up lockdown restrictions not only would we get a second spike in the virus we would then need to have a second lockdown and the economic pain and all the uncertainty that goes with it.”