Keep safe and ‘don’t have a Royle Family Christmas’
HEALTH EXPERT ISSUES WARNING ABOUT FESTIVE GATHERINGS
THE county’s top health official has advised people who plan to gather with friends and relatives for Christmas Day on how to keep safe – and that includes not having a ‘“Royle Family Christmas”.
Mike Sandys, Leicestershire’s public health director, said sensible precautions would be needed to help keep infections down over the festive season.
“Not to be negative, but infection numbers are beginning to creep up anyway and Christmas will only add to that,” he said.
“It’s just a fact that if people mix over Christmas there will be more cases as a result of that, but you can do things to try to make it as safe as you can.
“Just because you can have three households of any size over on Christmas Day doesn’t mean you should necessarily get every single member of your extended family under one roof for the day.
“If you’re going to do the Queen’s Speech at 3pm, it’s the day to just space yourself out and not do a sort of Royle Family-style effort on the sofa.
“We’re not going to ban Christmas or try to stop people enjoying it, but people need to be sensible.”
The government has announced a temporary relaxation of tier restrictions on Christmas Day only - down from the previous plan for five days - when people can form Christmas bubbles in their homes.
This applies to all areas except Tier 4 which forbids anyone meeting indoors.
However, science and health experts have raised fears that even this move will lead to rising infection rates in the new year.
There have been calls on the Department for Health and Social Care for people to take responsibility and think long and hard before deciding to mix with wider family.
Mr Sandys said: “If you are going to have the big family dinner around the Christmas table, then it is not the year to sit your granny next to your teenage kids because you have an at-risk person and someone from a group where we know the rates tend to be higher.
“People also have got to do the obvious stuff like wash their hands a lot, wipe the door handles clean – all the stuff about trying to make inside the house safe.”
Public health bosses have also warned that when people drink alcohol they are less likely to be careful about social distancing.