We need leadership now as new spikes loom

WHERE are the plans to protect London if coronavirus spikes again? Where is the leadership from the Mayor and the Prime Minister? Why aren’t they knocking heads together to make sure everyone who needs vital local data on infection rates can see it? Why haven’t they spelled out to us all what would happen if a surge in cases meant a local lockdown was needed? How would it be enforced?

These are vital questions about how we keep our city safe. You’d hope that months after the coronavirus crisis began the rules would be laser-sharp, the systems ready to go and everyone working together to catch infection to make sure rates do not start to soar again. Unfortunately, you’d be wrong.

Today the Evening Standard reveals the efforts London boroughs are making to cope with local outbreaks. What we’ve found is deeply worrying. They haven’t had the backing from the Mayor and the Prime Minister that they need. The Government’s Joint Biosecurity Centre, which oversees progress in the fight against the virus and is meant to pick up rapidly any rise in infection rates, still hasn’t explained how local lockdowns are supposed to work. The system isn’t ready — and in Leicester this week we’ve seen the consequences. A week after restricting activity in the city to control infection was first discussed, it’s still unclear what’s happening. The response was dangerously slow and confused.

There’s another big problem too: it’s still proving too hard to track infection rates and share information fast. Local authorities haven’t had access to the full picture — the so-called Pillar Two test results from private test centres which give the full picture of what’s going on. Unless precise information is shared postcode by postcode, catching infection pinpoints will be impossible. That means infection rates could be rising in places, without this hidden threat being spotted.

It’s important to remember that London has made great progress: infection and death rates have fallen dramatically. But it’s not quite the same everywhere: Brent has 456.5 cases per 100,000 people compared with just 204.9 in Tower Hamlets. That might simply show that tests were less targeted in the latter borough. But it might indicate that Brent has a problem which needs crushing, fast. So how will that be done?

The Government says councils should lead the response. But that’s wrong. It’s a job for the Mayor and the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister needs to get clear rules for emergency local lockdowns in place, and then tell the country how they would work so we can prepare. The Mayor needs to lead London’s response, not blame others: that means pulling together resources from across the city rather than just tell us that the city isn’t ready. He should ask himself why and sort it out. We’ve seen around the world that even countries which controlled infection from the start have seen spikes. We should be ready for the same here. We got our response to coronavirus wrong the first time around. We cannot afford to do that again.