Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
City braced for tough measures
▪ Health chief rules out return to Tier 1 as rates rise 107% ▪ Ban on households meeting set to stay after lockdown ▪ Infection spike sees patient numbers double in six days
Households in Canterbury are set to be banned from meeting indoors when lockdown ends as infection rates soar across the district.
Kent’s public health director has warned residents not to expect a return to Tier 1 restrictions when national measures finish on December 2.
It would likely mean Tier 2 rules being imposed on the city, Herne Bay and Whitstable, prohibiting different households from gathering together indoors.
KCC’S Andrew Scott-clark was speaking as new figures showed cases were rising faster in the district than anywhere else in the county.
A total of 354 positive tests were recorded in the seven days up to November 12 - a weekly rise of 107%.
It brought the district’s infection rate up to 214 weekly cases per 100,000 people.
It remains below the England average of 272, but more than doubled at the same time as the national rate rose just 10%. Incomplete figures suggest the district’s rate will have continued to rise in the days after November 12, while places once seen as national hotspots - such as Manchester and Liverpool - see theirs drop.
But Mr Scott-clark says the impact of the lockdown has yet to be seen in Kent.
“We hope to see a slowing in the growth of Covid cases right across the county,” he said.
“We’re looking for that to happen in those areas that have had significant increases, particularly in Thanet and Swale. But I would say it is too early to tell yet to know what is going to happen with the figures. “We’ll need to see the figures over the next week or two before we can really determine how we might come out of lockdown. “But I would say to people now, don’t expect to come out at the same place as we went in. “This is simply because of how numbers have risen significantly since those early days when we went into a tiering system.”
While the rate in Canterbury is rising the fastest in Kent, it still remains below other areas in the county.
Swale, with a rate of 531, and Thanet, at 481, are the worst, with leaders of both local councils this week urging action to get cases down to avoid a Christmas lockdown.
Both areas could find themselves hit with tougher restrictions than others should tiers be imposed on a district-by-district basis, rather than on the county as a whole. Canterbury City Council leader Ben Fitter-harding prefers a more localised approach to protect jobs and businesses in areas with low rates. “For many of our residents these measures can mean incredible hardship, and for business it’s increasingly a matter of whether or not they will survive at all,” he said. “I believe we owe it to our people to be as granular as possible when applying Covid restrictions, so that those living and working in areas where levels of infection are low are not unnecessarily harmed, and that controls and support are instead focussed on the areas where intervention is needed to keep the virus under control. “Ideally this granularity would mean applying restrictions to much smaller areas than entire districts, and in some cases that may be possible. But we have to find a balance between what is responsible to our residents and businesses and what can be understood and acted upon in a way that will reduce transmission.
“The national lockdown rules at the moment are already complicated, and communicating restrictions that apply to areas smaller than districts will become increasingly difficult.” “We don’t yet know what options the government will give us after this lockdown ends and we’re all closely watching the data from the start of lockdown, which we’re only now about to see the impact of.
“My hope is that the people of our district will have been doing everything they can to adhere to the rules and that we’ll see infection rates falling as a result, meaning more choices for us as we head into Christmas - an important time for families but also a vital one for our economy, particularly in retail and hospitality. Right now, we just have to wait and see.”
The rise in local cases has led to an increased number of Covid patients in hospitals.
The number of beds occupied by people with the virus at the Kent and Canterbury, QEQM in Margate and William Harvey in Ashford rose from 43 to 83 from last Tuesday to Monday. The Trust has recorded 20 Covid deaths so far in November - 14 more than in the whole of October.
What do you think? Email kentishgazette@thekmgroup. co.uk
‘We’ll need to see the figures over the next week or two before we can really determine how we might come out of lockdown’