County Health Chief Says Derbyshire Should Remain in Tier 3

Derbyshire should remain in Tier 3, the county's public health chief says.

Dean Wallace, Derbyshire County Council's director of public health, says the rapid recent increase in Covid-19 infections means the county should not be placed in Tier 2.

Drawing on his and his team's expertise, he says that Derbyshire should remain in Tier 3 until at least mid-January, meaning restaurants and pubs serving food will be limited to providing takeaways and businesses such as cinemas, hotels and bowling alleys would remain closed.

Mr Wallace believes it is important to see the impact of socialising at Christmas and New Year before restrictions can be relaxed in Derbyshire.

He stresses that the highest alert restrictions are necessary for public health reasons.

A decision on which tier Derby and Derbyshire will be in is due to be announced tomorrow, Wednesday, December 16.

Talking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Mr Wallace said: "From a pure health and wellbeing perspective, as a county over the last seven days, compared to the previous seven, we have seen a 20 per cent increase in the infection rate per 100,000 of the population, so we are starting to see a growth in infection rate when we had been seeing a consistent, steady decline and that is quite a sizable growth.

"That is affecting different parts of the county differently and we know the NHS is still under pressure and particularly in intensive care and other parts of the system, so my view is that heading into a period we know that the rules are going to relax anyway (for Christmas) and seeing what is happening elsewhere, my view would be that we stay at Tier 3.

"There are other views and perfectly legitimate arguments from other perspectives, but if I am purely doing my job, which is to advocate for the health of the population, and people probably won't like it, in some quarters, but my position is that we should stay as we are and review in January.

"For me, after Christmas, when it is reviewed again, you keep it steady.

"You wouldn't expect to come out of a national lockdown and see the rates increasing as fast as they are, it has been quite a big jump when previously we have either been flat-lining or decreasing or seeing a slight increase.

"Having that increase now is slightly concerning, given where we are, and unfortunately, the virus isn't going to take a break for Christmas."

Dropping down into Tier 2 would allow pubs and bars serving substantial amounts of food, restaurants, hotels, cinemas and indoor entertainment, and large sports and live performances to restart and reopen.

Asked when the county could expect this change, Mr Wallace said: "It depends what the picture is looking like towards the back end of January. I'm not all for shutting hospitality and saying that Tier 3 restrictions are brilliant.

"With the restrictions we have now we are going the wrong way and it worries me from a public health perspective.

"It gets portrayed that we are this Nanny State that wants to tell people what to do, but it is absolutely coming from a place that this virus will cause lots of damage to people's health and wellbeing and some people will not survive it and our way of dealing with it, right now, is to carry on doing what we are doing.

"We need the level of restrictions that helps us do that because we have shown we can't do it without."

Mr Wallace said that people are "always looking for the quick fix" but says this is not possible with Covid-19.

He said that the vaccine will not have a substantial impact until spring if there is a good amount of uptake of it.

Mr Wallace said the best way to get down the tiers was to continue social distancing as a base requirement, coupled with a face covering and good hand hygiene.

Alongside this, he said people must self-isolate if told to do so and that if community testing is offered to them, they should take it up.

All these measures, in tandem with mass vaccination, need to be followed to get the virus under control, allowing the council to track and limit infections and for the NHS to cope.

Mr Wallace says that for an area to drop down through the tiers it needs to show:

A continuing and sustained decrease in trajectory of cases per 100,000 people

A reducing rate in the proportion of people testing positive out of those being tested through symptomatic testing

The number of new Covid-19 cases in Derbyshire is rising.

In the eight days after the nation's second lockdown, the number of new confirmed Covid cases in Derbyshire per week has increased by more than 300.

The number of Covid-19 patients at Derby and Burton's hospital trust is now higher than at the peak of the first wave of the disease, increasing for the first time alongside the end of the second lockdown.

There are nearly 300 seriously ill Covid-19 patients in hospitals in Burton, Chesterfield and Derby.