Posted: Wed 7th Oct 2020

Wrexham could be in local pandemic measures for “more than a month” but council leader confident “we will get through this and come out the other end”

Wrexham.com for people living in or visiting the Wrexham area
This article is old - Published: Wednesday, Oct 7th, 2020

The leader of Wrexham Council has warned that the county borough could be under local lockdown measures for “longer than a month” but that together residents “will get through this and we will come out the other end”.

Wrexham has been under the stricter measures since 6pm on Thursday October 1st. This means that people living in the area cannot “bubble up” with another household unless they live on their own and travel is restricted to being within the county borough unless it is for food, work or another essential reason. Shops, restaurants, pubs and cinemas remain open however under the measures you would not be able to visit them with anyone outside of your household.

The “local lockdown” was introduced due to what has been described as a “rapid increase” in the number if positive cases.

Speaking this week leader of the council Mark Pritchard, said he had ‘full confidence’ in the people of Wrexham to work together to drive case numbers down.

The initial decision to tighten measures in the area caught many off guard, with figures seemingly low in the area. They have however continued to rise over the last seven days. Today’s figures have Wrexham passing the 125 cases per 100,000 population mark on the seven day rolling figures up to the 4th – with last Tuesday that being 33 per 100k.

Yesterday we asked about the decision making process itself, with Cllr Pritchard having been in the meeting last week that decided to take measures for Wrexham and three other council areas in North Wales.

“What I would say is, is that every authority has their own sovereignty, and decision making process within their council,” he said.

“That is quite right too, and that long may that continue. I felt personally that we should have locked down together as one, as North Wales, so we would have locked down together, and we open up together.”

“I respect the Leaders of Gwynedd and Anglesey, they are good people, but at that time they didn’t think that it was appropriate for them to go in to lockdown.

“Coming back to Wrexham, I think it was the right decision at the right time.”

Wrexham entered the restrictions on Thursday 1st, with the Health Minister saying the first review takes place two weeks after that, and then weekly thereafter.

Cllr Pritchard explained he was not expecting anything to change in the first few reviews, and that Wrexham could be in such measures for several weeks: “It could be longer than six weeks. I’m not going to mislead anybody.

“If you look where we were at 10 cases per 100,000 population,  then it went to 28, then it went to 40 and then 89.”

As he was speaking on Tuesday morning, Cllr Pritchard added that the figures were due to rise in that day’s figures – which it did with 40 cases and over 100 per 100k figure.

“It will take some time to plateau and level out. Then we will monitor it and watch it for obvious reasons.”

“If we all work together we can come out of this local lockdown together. I think it’s only a matter of time before the other authorities go into lockdown, but it will depend on the figures.”

“I must say, I was in that meeting. It was a very difficult meeting and I know that the Welsh Government really didn’t want to do the local lockdown. I know that Public Health Wales, in fact everybody in that meeting, really wanted to try and keep it as normal as possible.”

“Unfortunately, the Welsh Government, ourselves and everybody agreed that it was the right thing to do for the people of Wrexham and North Wales. It’s all about keeping people safe, and making sure the numbers don’t increase in the hospitals. I think we’re all aware of that.”

“Let’s hope the numbers really start to level out, then we can look at them and make decisions in the future.”

“But, it will certainly be longer than a month, that’s where we are at.”

Council Chief Executive Ian Bancroft explained the “health protection zone”, stating that it is “not like the lock downs we had from March onwards, where we were not able to go out and exercise and not able to travel”

He emphasised the rules that you can read on the Welsh Government “Local Lockdown” page here.  He added that by 6pm on Thursday as the new rules came into play Wrexham Council was fully compliant with the regulations, and where staff can work from home, they are again – after reopening up after the last restrictions.

Speaking about the restrictions and what the future might hold Mr Bancroft said, “I think we’ve acted early, just like we did with the testing in Caia Park earlier on when we had the Rowan Foods outbreak.

“By acting early, we reduce the amount of restrictions and lockdown. Our hospitality businesses are still open, industry is still open, which is really critical for us. So acting early means that you have less impact, and you come out of the situation quicker. That’s what we all need to hope for.

“We want to say a big thank you to all our residents and everybody who’s working so hard on this, and we understand everybody’s frustration. It’s really difficult for everybody. We absolutely understand how hard it is. But, if we comply, then we get to a stage where we come out of those restrictions quicker.”

Asked why Wrexham had seen such a sudden rise in cases, he added: “We are a major urban area with a hospital, a prison, large numbers of students and also a large industrial estate. So I think when you look at us in terms risk, we are a high risk area for Covid-19.”

“When you’re in a high risk category it means the figures can increase quite quickly. So generally, the decisions that are taken are about whether it’s been transmitted in the community. At the point of Rowan Foods and the Maelor Hospital, because we did community testing, we could show that it wasn’t spreading amongst and between communities.

“That was the reason we didn’t go into a local lockdown at that stage. They were issues where we were really clear where those numbers were, they were associated with those specific outbreaks.

“In this instance, you can see numbers in a number of different settings, and in different communities. So it’s not like it’s one site, or two or even three sites.

“That is the reason, as well as having the cases per 100k trigger points, it’s also the assessment you make with the other information that you’ve got available to you that says, are those numbers in one place, or are they in a number of places?

“Clearly we’ve seen a number of schools are in that situation. There’s been outbreaks within some businesses and also other instances occurring, so that is why we need to have local restrictions in place is because of that transmission within the community.”

Cllr Pritchard added: “When you look where we are location wise with the M53 and M56, the largest industrial estate in Europe, the university, colleges and schools and the largest town in North Wales, we knew that it was going to come back. It is no surprise to anybody.”

“If you look at what’s happened in France and Spain and all over the world, we knew that we could have a second wave, we might have a third or fourth, we don’t know. Nobody knows what the future holds.

“We were prepared for this and we put everything in place to manage it, working with Welsh Government, Public Health Wales and our partners.

“Will we have schools shut or some bubbles in school? Yes, we will. Will we have some companies that might have to close down temporary? Yes. Will the University have an outbreak? Probably, yes. We know this. It’s how we manage it, mitigate the risks and work with everybody to get through it because it isn’t a sprint, this is a marathon and we all have to work together to get through it.

“I would like to thank the people of Wrexham with regards to the national lockdown. I think they were fantastic. I look around me now in Wrexham and I see people following all the rules and regulations and behaviour.  Unfortunately, we will have a small percentage of people who don’t want to do to it and that’s where the police have to come in now and enforce a local lockdown.”

“We will get through this and we will come out the other end, and that is what we have to do, because it certainly isn’t going to go away and it’s going to be with us for a long time.

“I have every confidence in the people of Wrexham, to all work together and get through this.”

Welsh Government have published a Q&A on what the restrictions mean for the area on their site, entitled “Wrexham County Borough lockdown: frequently asked questions”.



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