Wrexham lockdown measures taken as “sparks” seen so acting “before those sparks became a forest fire”

“When you start seeing sparks, there’s an opportunity to act before those sparks became a forest fire that requires much more significant action.”

That is the message from Wales’ Health Minister Vaughan Gething about the decision to introduce local lockdown measures in Wrexham, Flintshire, Conwy and Denbighshire from 6pm Thursday (1 October).

Today we had the opportunity to ask questions to three Welsh Government ministers, with Education Minister Kirsty Williams taking questions at lunchtime prior to the latest figures being made public. This afternoon and this evening we spoke with both the health minister and Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales Ken Skates.

Yesterday’s announcement about tighter restrictions in Wrexham came as a surprise to many – with the county borough not featuring on any previous Welsh Government “watch lists”.

On Monday Wrexham.com reported Mr Skates had highlighted how Wrexham managed to drive down the infection rate during a spike in cases over the summer. Following an outbreak connected to the Rowan Foods factory on the Wrexham Industrial Estate and at the hospital, mobile testing units were introduced in Caia Park and Hightown to find out if coronavirus was widespread within the community.

However after several days and over 1,400 tests, transmission was found to be “significantly lower” than had been initially feared.

Just over 24 hours later it was announced that Wrexham, along with Flintshire, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Conwy, would be entering a period of tighter restrictions from 6pm on Thursday.

Today we asked Mr Skates why the decision to put Wrexham into local lockdown was made after last night’s announcement caught people off guard.

He explained that cases locally had been rising sharply and that the “the longer you leave action, the longer you are going to be within containment measures.”

Mr Skates said: “We’ve been reviewing the rolling number of cases over a seven day period and unfortunately, across north east Wales cases have been rising in each of the local authorities, but the rise in the Wrexham County Borough area has been particularly sharp.

“The decision was reached in conjunction with local authority leaders, including the leader of Wrexham Council, also health professionals, university vice chancellors and the police. This is not an easy decision to make.

“All of us believed that acting swiftly would enable us to ensure that Wrexham and the other three council areas in areas of north east Wales will be able to come out of restrictions quicker. The longer that you wait before bringing in local restrictions, the longer an area is likely to then be contained within those restrictions.

“So in the interest of making sure that we can get businesses through this as swiftly as possible and get citizens through this as soon as possible, the decision was taken to act now.

“By taking action now will enable us to bring Wrexham out of containment much sooner than if we waited several more days and waited for that infection rate to rise even further.”

Ken Skates

Today further information around the reasons for lockdown measures has emerged, with an increase in cases per 100k figures, as well as positive proportion of tests. We asked Mr Gething to run through the decision making process, what changed and when, and how Wrexham’s position as a positive one, evaporated to a lockdown situation.

He said: “We had information from Public Health Wales on the figures, as they were, and also the local intelligence about the spread of Coronavirus.

“We had information ahead of the publication of the figures today. That information was largely about the fact that we’ve seen coronavirus seeded in a range of different areas and the intelligence about how well people adhere to self isolation, how many clusters that are explained, how many clusters are linked.

“That is a key part of the intelligence, and also it building on learning from the last six months but from the last six weeks since we started from a very low base in the middle of August in terms of Coronavirus, effectively suppressed very low rates of hospital care, hardly anybody in intensive care. But within the next four weeks, we saw the need to take action starting an Caerphilly and then RCT.

“So we have seen a very rapid growth in authorities in south Wales and we’re starting to see that rapid growth in north Wales. Actually learning from south Wales has been applied to taking action in the north.

“The 50 per 100,000 data point on new cases isn’t a hard and fast ‘don’t take action until it gets to 50’ or ‘you must take action when it’s past 50’.

“Again you will recall in Wrexham when we had the the Rowan Foods incident, Wrexham was well above 50 per 100,000 in terms of the rates, but it was effectively contained around one site. Community testing around that time demonstrated there wasn’t a community outbreaks, and we didn’t need to take wider community measures.”

“Actually, what we see now is there’s a much wider spread within the community and we don’t have that same level of confidence to not take action.”

“There’s an analogy that has been used in in Cardiff and Vale that I think applies to the rest of the country. When you start seeing sparks, there’s an opportunity with the information you’re getting in the hard data, but also with the softer intelligence of whats actually happening, to act before those sparks became a forest fire that requires much more significant action.”

We also asked the Minister what review periods are in place, and what figures Wrexham and other areas will be looking to return to before lockdowns are eased.

Mr Gething said: “It is 14 days for the initial review, and then we are going to review the restrictions on a regular basis, at least every seven days. So, we’re looking at every point on a Thursday to have a regular review of the action that we’re taking.”

“So after the 14 days, we need to consider do we need to consider continuing with the action. That will again be a combination of data and indeed the softer intelligence of community conduct adherence to Track Trace Protect and whether we’re seeing uncontrolled outbreaks taking place as well, or clusters that aren’t linked to each other.”

“We are looking to see a sustained fall below the 50 rate. But actually, I think we’d want to go below 50 as well, because it’s still fairly high if you’re into the 40s.”

“Equally, if people are in the 30s per hundred thousand, then that’s still on our watch list for concerns. So it depends about the amount of confidence we have about the sustained level of the reduction and we’ll run through that first, probably in Caerphilly and Newport, because they’re hovering around 50, and then Caerphilly it was much, much higher.

“That means that if we get below 50, and see it stay below 50, we will then consider the reliability of the evidence of the sustained nature that fall. So I can’t give an exact data point, but it is more than just the data that we need to rely on when making these choices, both to have local restrictions and to ease out of them.

“But, the fact that Caerphilly has seen a significant fall in cases I think, should provide people with some hope, both that local restrictions can and do work, and that we’re having a different sort of conversation about when you might be able to do something different with your family in the lifting some of those restrictions.

“It certainly isn’t a one way escalator to further and further measures.”

Vaughan Gething

Cheshire West and Chester has 61 cases per 100,000 people in the latest week, we pointed out to the minister that if that was in Wales it would be in a lockdown, and if it was in Slovakia, there would be the quarantine rules. We asked the Minister if this is something he could legislate on, and take action as has been done elsewhere, and enquired why is England not on existing lists, or specific English counties.

Mr Gething replied: “There are two things I think it’s worth pointing out. The first is that the test of our legal powers for movement within the UK, within the common travel area, I’m not sure how we carve that out, we could probably find an inventive way to do it. But, I think trying to create internal borders between other countries is not preferable.

“It is preferable that the UK Government act in terms of the restrictions they are providing in England. To make sure those local restrictions really are local and that that population with heightened challenges in virus uptake, and don’t move around and potentially spread and continue the spread of the virus with all the harm it causes.”

“You are right to point out if those counties were a different country, then there would be quarantine arrangements for people who have traveled from that country into any part of the UK.”

“The second point I’d make is that we have not just had a constructive and mature conversation with local authorities across North Wales, we’ve also made sure that we’ve had some engagement with those authorities in the northwest of England.

“So Ken Skates as Minister for North Wales has spoke with the leader of some of those border authorities on the English side to explain what we’re doing and why.

“My understanding is that they themselves are concerned and would rather take action sooner rather than later as well. I

“‘m not in a position to undertake public health action for England, my responsibilities are for Wales, but we would welcome measures being taken to protect people in England and recognising the very clear social and economic links that are part of day to day normal life in northeast Wales, with Northwest England.”

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