At today’s (Thursday) Local Outbreak Engagement Board meeting the Isle of Wight council leader, Dave Stewart, expressed caution about going forward in relation to Covid-19.
Following an update from Director of Public Health, Simon Bryant, in which the trend of falling daily numbers (see here) was explained, Cllr Stewart asked whether it was too early to forecast a positive summer.
Stewart: We probably we won’t be inviting people over for Easter
Cllr Stewart said,
“People will be asking when we think the Isle of Wight will be open for business tourism, one of our key areas.
“It feels like a little bit early yet, we need to get this combination of activities through, sounds to me like if that works well, we could be seeing a positive summer – I am not trying to raise expectation, but manage it – but we won’t, for example be inviting people for February half term and probably we won’t be inviting people over for Easter.”
Bryant: we need to think really cautiously and carefully
Mr Bryant replied that it was a really difficult question to answer, adding,
“We need to be really cautious and look at the rate of infection and manage that very carefully. As we move out of lockdown we need to think really cautiously and carefully.
“How we support businesses to open carefully? We absolutely want all our children to get back to school. Things around that have changed, now schools have the lateral flow tests and as more vaccination programmes roll out, we will start to see the impact in next few days, a reduction of infection due to people not getting so sick.
“I think by the summer we will be in a place to look forward to some kind of summer.”
Stewart: Feels like, at long last, the Island is moving forward
Cllr Stewart added,
“For me it feels a bit positive, we have the figures which is good news, the vaccination programme is going well, we’ve now got the community testing initiative, which if it all comes to plan, will be hunting the virus down almost, meaning we’re on the positive front.
“With all those things coming together as well as people fully understanding need to stick to the rules, stay at home etc, it feels like at long last the Island is moving forward in that way, but we have to remember it’s a slow process and it doesn’t take a lot as we learnt at Christmas to all go horribly, horribly wrong.”
Stewart: “Stick to the rules,” for a “brighter summer”
Cllr Stewart finished by saying,
“My message is stick to the rules, stay at home protect the NHS as we always do and save people’s lives. We’ll let you know when the time is right to do differently.
“If everybody does what they need to we’re looking at a brighter summer, a managed summer I suspect, but nevertheless brighter summer and that’s good news.”
Image: Tom Wheatley under CC BY 2.0
