Don’t kill Granny!
Warning in Preston where half of new Covid cases are under 30
YOUNG people in Preston are bei ng ur ged ‘ don’t ki l l your granny’ in a desperate effort to curb the soaring rates of coronavirus after the city was forced to go into lockdown.
Households mixing in pubs and homes have been blamed for the surge in cases – but officials fear youngsters will not take the new restrictions seriously.
Almost half of Preston’s 61 new cases were found to be among people aged under 30, according to local officials. Yet despite the troubling figures, bars and pubs in the Lancashire city were reportedly bustling on Friday night – even after the new rules were imposed from midnight.
All 140,000 residents are now banned from mixing with any other households indoors or in a garden, in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus. They have also been urged to avoid meeting friends in pubs and restaurants.
Preston City Council chief executive Adrian Phillips, who backed calls for councils to have more powers to shut pubs, warned that youngsters risked infecting older people. ‘I know our director of publ i c health has said “don’t kill Granny” to young people to try to focus the message,’ he told Radio 4’s Today programme.
He also threatened tougher action if people did not abide by the restrictions, which came just a week after the same measures were imposed in Greater Manchester, parts of East Lancashire, Leicester and West Yorkshire. In Scotland, Aberdeen has been placed in a fresh lockdown after an outbreak of cases linked to a number of bars emerged.
There were 61 new cases in Preston in the seven days to August 4, almost double the number over the previous seven days.
Swindon is also showing signs of particular concern, with 111 new cases, but there are no additional local measures so far.
Yesterday, opinions among people in Preston were divided over the new lockdown rules.
Charlene Gardner, 38, said: ‘I was happy the restrictions were brought in because I think we do need the police to get involved.
‘The pubs around us had crowds of 30 or 40 outside last night. It won’t mean any changes for us because we haven’t been seeing family anyway but I saw some reaction online last night and I think a lot of people aren’t going to listen to it.’ Hannah Heaton, 28, said she found the rules confusing. ‘It doesn’t make sense that you can’t go to houses but you can meet people outside or go to pubs,’ she said.
‘My grandparents rely on me to help them and now going to see them has been taken away from me. I think some people haven’t been taking the virus seriously because they don’t think it will affect them.’
Social bubbles are exempt from the restrictions, and residents can meet in groups of up to six – or more than six if exclusively from two households – in outdoor areas such as parks and beer gardens. Households can also visit indoor venues such as pubs and restaurants as long as they do not mix with others.
The Local Government Association wants town halls to be handed extra powers to close pubs that are flouting social distancing rules.
It says most are working hard to comply with the guidance but councils fear that some pubs are not collecting contact details of customers so they can be reached in the event of an outbreak.
Across the UK yesterday, the number of people to have died after testing positive for coronavirus rose by 55 to 46,556.