Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
LOCKDOWN II
District’s Covid-19 cases comparably low as second lockdown begins
Canterbury’s Covid-19 infection rate remained less than half the UK average ahead of a second lockdown being imposed on the district today.
The Government has ordered people to stay in their homes except for a limited number of reasons in a bid to curb the spread of Covid-19.
It has done so as some areas of the country experience a huge surge in hospital admissions and deaths following a rise in coronavirus cases.
But in the Canterbury district - and Kent as a whole - the infection rate remains well below that seen nationally. Latest figures show there were 146 new cases across the city, Herne Bay and Whitstable in the week up to October 29 - a rate of 88 weekly cases per 100,000 people.
Across the same period, the rate in the UK was 227.5, and in some areas topped 700.
But on Saturday Boris Johnson ditched the relatively new three-tier system in favour of month-long national lockdown, which came into effect after midnight last night.
Save for some exceptions, the restrictions require people to stay at home, ban them from gathering with other households, and force non-essential businesses to close.
To justify the tough measures, the country was shown worry
ing slides highlighting the rise in Covid-19 hospital admissions nationally, and projections on how the NHS will be overwhelmed should action not be taken.
But in Canterbury the second wave has yet to be felt as acutely as elsewhere in the country. The most up-to-date statistics for deaths in all settings show that in the nine weeks between August 21 and October 23, two people from the district died with Covid-19 - one in a care and home and the other in hospital. Figures for just those deaths in hospitals are published more regularly, with the East Kent Trust recording eight between October 1 and November 2 across its sites.
This compares to a national high of 211 in Liverpool over the same period.
But with four of the East Kent deaths occurring in the most recent week, the Trust says it is prepared for an increase in admissions at the QEQM in Margate and William Harvey in Ashford.
A spokesperson said: “We are prepared for a rise in cases across the Trust, and have more knowledge of Covid-19 than we did in the spring, which has helped shape our planning. “We have created a new stateof-the-art respiratory ward at QEQM and work has also begun on a Covid escalation area, creating more capacity for Covid patients, with the ability to flex up and down as needed, depending on the current number of patients.”
She added that an additional 10 intensive care beds were opened at the QEQM in the summer, while a ward at the William Harvey has been repurposed into a dedicated Covid ward with individual rooms for patients. An additional eight-bed intensive care unit was also opened last week at the Ashford hospital.
But it is hoped the national lockdown being imposed at a time when the regions’s infection rate is comparably low will prevent admissions and deaths reaching levels seen during the peak of the first wave in April. The Trust will not release figures on the number of Covid-19 patients currently in its hospitals, and the statistics are only published by the NHS on a monthly basis.
But in a newsletter sent out to 8,000 staff on Monday, chief executive Susan Acott confirmed there were 23 cases across its sites in Ashford and Margate. Although still low, figures show this number was just two on October 1.
It is, however, nowhere near the peak of the first wave, when 187 beds were occupied by coronavirus patients on April 20. In that month, 168 people lost their lives at hospitals in east Kent after testing positive for Covid-19.
MP Rosie Duffield’s office told the Gazette she was unavailable for comment.
See pages 6-11 for more on the lockdown.