I hope all of you had a lovely Easter weekend, enjoying the sunshine, seeing loved ones in the garden, and of course, overindulging in chocolate eggs.
The UK has made significant progress in recent months in our fight against Covid-19. Finally, we are starting to see real benefits from our collective sacrifice and the hard work of the NHS as this week the Prime Minister announced we will be going ahead with step two of the roadmap.
This means, from April 12th, non-essential shops, gyms, and most importantly for Boris Johnson, hairdressers will be able to reopen. Most eagerly anticipated of all by most of us is the reopening of pub gardens, and just in time for the warmer weather.
The relaxation of the restrictions are in large part down to the national vaccine programme and I am pleased to report that in West Sussex we have an extremely good uptake. Over 98% of people in care have now had at least one dose of vaccine, and in all the top four categories, which includes all those above 70 years old, there’s an uptake of over 93% in each. Our fantastic vaccination teams have even done over 80% of ‘Group 9’ which is the 50-54 cohort.
We owe Siobhan Melia and her team at the Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust, who are running the effort, and all the doctors, nurses and volunteers a huge thank you. I will be raising my first drink out to them all.
Alongside the vaccine programme is our rapid testing operation, which, as of Friday this week, will be available to everyone in England for free. This is crucial to our reopening strategy as 1 in 3 people with Covid-19 have no symptoms. These tests are easy and quick to do from home and will enable us to stop any outbreaks before they get going. These lateral flow tests will be available through local pharmacies, testing centres, many workplaces and even via home delivery. So I encourage everyone to collect a test kit from next week and download the NHS Covid-19 app if you haven’t already.
We are heading in the right direction, and to get back to near normality as quickly as possible we all need to continue to do our bit and pull in the same direction.