Time for a Full Lockdown Now ?
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The villages around Wrexham seem to be taking it in turns to have the worst of the virus with Llay, Gwersyllt & West Wrexham having the worst of it now. I don’t think that many have got away lightly except for Bangor, Overton & Penley & even their numbers are rising.
The numbers have gone up over Christmas & the New Year so it seems that pubs that stopped selling alcohol on 30th November weren’t to blame, secondary schools closed for home learning on 14th December. By my reckoning the numbers should have dropped by 14th- 21st November for pubs to be the cause & 28th – 4th January for secondary schools instead of which they have risen hugely since 21st December.
Town has been quiet, photos on facebook show empty streets, no news of outbreaks in any of the factories, so the only places that it can be flourishing is care homes, hospital, in the home & supermarkets or am I reading it wrong.
You have described perfectly the reason why the whole of UK should be in full lockdown. The tier system doesn’t work , those who look for ways of getting around the system go to an area in a lower tier , in Wrexham’s case probably Chester that was in Tier2 and therefore shops and restaurants were open. Now Chester is Tier 4, Shropshire is probably getting more visitors. At the end of the day it is people and their behaviour that is spreading this virus , it doesn’t spread itself!
I think your musings are perfectly logical to me Zinger, apart from that we now have the recently mutated more virulent and transmissible variant in circulation and firmly in control. It has increased spread factor by an R rate of around 0.7.
It goes without saying that rates will increase in line with levels of population. It needs people to spread. This is why we have to take the necessary precautions. For this reason, it will continue to infect different areas at different rates as people’s pattern of behaviour changes. Today it is Gwersyllt and West Wrexham, next week it will be somewhere else. It’s the same across the country. It is for this reason that I believe we are heading inextricably towards a national lockdown, with one eye on maximising the national roll-out of the Oxford vaccine. I do not believe it will be possible to prevent its spread by good practice alone. Too many people do not have the necessary will-power or self-control. You see it in every aspect of life. The covid rules in place, such as travel restrictions, are highly unenforcible, and you will always have 10% non-compliance. And then you have the deniers, the flat-earthers of this world. We are told that the principle way of transmission is inside buildings, particularly the home. People going into other people’s homes. The 10% who do this will continue to spread the new virus variant into our communities. A national lockdown won’t stop this, which is why I say it will not be possible to stop its spread, but it is better than doing nothing or fudging the issue and chasing our tale playing catch-up. It’s not that different to current life anyway. All we can hope for is for a concerted full-scale roll-out effort for mass vaccination for everyone as soon as possible. For those who do not wish to take up their offer; that’s fine, they take their chance. I just hope they don’t fall off the edge of their flat earth. It will be of little consequence for those of us who have been vaccinated anyway.
The latest slide from Vaughan Gething shows BCHB is the ONLY health board in Wales where cases of covid are increasing since level 4 was implemented! What’s going on?
Apparently the whole of the UK is going into a level 5 threat level, as signed off by the devolved health ministers. However, what this means for rules in Wales is anyone’s guess as our levels only go up to 4. All will be revealed tonight/tomorrow I guess.
Now England is in lockdown and their shops are also closed we will see if it has any effect on our case numbers. Potentially we face at least another seven weeks locked down and that’s the optimistic view if they get the vaccination programme turbo charged !!
When the huge spike in new variant cases was thriving in South East Wales towards the end of last year, our Cardiff-based leaders described it as a Wales problem. They did nothing to target the isolated areas for fear of creating an unwanted label. Now that it has reached North East Wales, they don’t hesitate in identifying North East Wales from the off and specifically pin-pointing Wrexham as the hotspot.
The Gresford, Marford and Rossett area is currently showing the highest number of new cases in north Wales with 113 new cases in the week up to 31st December. These high numbers of new cases now emerging reflect the extent of the level of household mixing restrictions people believed related to them over the festive period, and the fall-out from New Year’s Eve is yet to be felt. It just shows how easily transmissible the virus is.
Whilst I agree some of the figures are due to household mixing it should also be noted that many of the areas in Wrexham with high figures also have a number of residential homes. It only takes a few people in a residential home to catch Covid and the number could rocket very quickly.
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