‘Young people need to heed warning message’
MORE needs to be done to inform young people about the spread of coronavirus, a councillor has said.
Martha Vickers (Lib Dem, Newbury Central) said she was concerned about the virus being transmitted by people who thought they would not be impacted by it.
Speaking in a meeting last week, Mrs Vickers said: “We are seeing a little bit of a rise, even here, but rises elsewhere.
“There’s a general concern about getting the message across that people still need to be careful, but particularly young people don’t see this as affecting them.
“They are a particularly difficult group to actually engage with, but they are out there as not going to be seriously ill themselves, but people who will be transmitting the infection.”
West Berkshire Council head of public health Matt Pearce said Mrs Vickers was right to raise the concern as some of the transmission occurring nationally and in Europe was through younger people, who were potentially asymptomatic.
The council has created a website with updated information on the number of cases and deaths in the district, as well as its outbreak management plan.
It has also been using social media channels Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook, including a paid-for campaign on Facebook.
Council leader Lynne Doherty (Con, Speen) said the local authority had been thinking about its reach to younger people, which would form part of the recovery plan and link in with the local outbreak control plan.
Mrs Vickers said that social media was a good way to engage with young people and leaders of youth groups needed to be in the frame.
She said: “Anybody working with young people just needs to be very clear that they need to be actively engaging with them and making sure it’s not just about them and the fact they won’t be really sick.
“It’s about how they might affect other people and that’s the message, obviously for the whole of the population, and I’m not quite sure everybody has got that yet. It’s not just about them.
“You don’t wear a mask to protect yourself, you wear a mask and other people wear masks to protect each other and I’m really not sure that message has got across.”
Mr Pearce said the council was working with high-risk areas and communications would be shared if one location had suspected or confirmed cases.
The council has also been sharing national messages and updates, placing posters in high streets, and is issuing a new leaflet on the outbreak plan, which is being translated into Hindi, Urdu, Polish and Portuguese.