Covid high underlines need for lockdown - The Worcester Observer

Covid high underlines need for lockdown

Worcester Editorial 7th Jan, 2021   0

CITY care home staff have revealed they were among the first in the country to be vaccinated against Covid-19 as Worcester was plunged into lockdown for a third time.

Nursing staff at Latimer Court on Darwin Avenue received the first of two doses of the vaccine on December 18 at Redditch’s Alexandra Hospital.

The news was revealed hours after city residents were again asked to stay at home and less than a week after Worcester was moved into tier three of the Government’s coronavirus restrictions.

Staff member Mandy Sherwood said: “I am so pleased to be given the vaccine. It will help to keep our residents safe and is the first step in getting things back to normal and having a buzz of visitors in our home once again.”




Schools across Worcester will be closed until after the February half-term after Prime Minister Boris Johnson revealed a third national lockdown on Monday (January 4).

Speaking some six hours after Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon put her country into lockdown, Mr Johnson said we ‘needed to do more together’ to contain the new variant of Covd-19 which is between 50 per cent and 70 per cent more infectious.


As a result, the Prime Minister urged residents to stay at home and only leave to shop for essentials, to work if they cannot work from home, to seek medical assistance or to escape domestic abuse.

In an echo of March’s lockdown, the clinically vulnerable will be told to shield and schools across the county will close. The Prime Minister added it would be ‘extremely unfair’ for teenagers to sit GSCE and A-Levels this summer and offered a repeat of the predicted grades given to last summer’s cohort.

Children of key workers will be allowed to attend school while early years setting such as nurseries will remain open.

Mr Johnson again offered a timetable of the road ahead and said by the middle of February ‘if things go well’ the government expects to have offered a first vaccine dose to everyone in the four top priority groups: all residents in a care home for older adults and their carers, everyone over the age of 70 and all frontline health and social care workers.

In response, Dr Kathryn Cobain, the director for Public Health in Worcestershire, revealed the county’s infection rate was at the highest ever seen,

In the past seven days alone, the county has 1,888 positive Covid-19 cases, which is more than all positive cases seen during May, June, July, August and September combined.

“The situation has demonstrated how working together, we are able to support one another and get through. I am asking you to do this once again,” Dr Cobain said.

“The single most important thing you can do for everyone, is to stay home. Please do this for yourself and for others. Let’s take care of each other, and work together.”

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