Former Home Secretary reveals three ways Sheffield could avoid local lockdown as cases soar

Following Sheffield’s director of public health, Greg Fell, saying that it is not ‘when’ but ‘if’ in regards to a local lockdown for the city, Sheffield-born former Home Secretary Lord Blunkett has said the city must ‘mobilise everyone willing to help’ to try and avoid these restrictions.

The former Home Secretary and ex-Labour MP wants us to place ‘destiny in our own hands’ by focusing on university cases, concentrating health education messages, and taking a ‘greater level of control of test and trace’.

David Blunkett, now chair of the Sheffield City Partnership Board, said: “I understand the genuine concern expressed in this newspaper by the director of public health for Sheffield, Greg Fell. His prediction that it is a matter of when and not if stronger measures to combat Covid-19 will be necessary, is a reflection of trends elsewhere.

“But surely there are steps we could take together as a city that would offer some chance of placing our destiny in our hands and avoiding the social and economic impact of further restrictions.”

The infection rate in Sheffield almost tripled in the space of a week, with 286.6 new cases per 100,000 people in the week running up to Friday, October 2.

If this rate keeps increasing, the city could be a matter of days away from further restrictions, with Nottingham joining the list of tighter restrictions in areas across the country today.

However, Lord Blunkett, who was Shadow Secretary of State for Health for a period in the 1990’s, went on to outline three ways of ‘avoiding’ these possibly detrimental restrictions.

He said: “We could for instance disaggregate the spread of infection affecting the two universities to have a clearer picture of what is happening out in the community.

“We could map where the rise in infection levels is greatest and concentrate health education messages and community action to spread the word and improve compliance.

“We could also take a greater level of control of test and trace and have a very focused approach which avoids wholesale measures that impact on the lives and businesses of those who clearly are less affected by the rise in those testing positive for the virus.

“In other words, we must mobilise everyone willing to help and get across the common-sense measures advocated by the director of public health.”

Greg Fell has admitted that they are doing everything they can to ‘avoid an imposed lockdown’, but cannot rule out the possibility until cases across Sheffield start to fall, and the infection rate starts to decrease.

The director of public health said: “We are still seeking to avoid an imposed lockdown, or more to the point the imposition of measures that restrict social movement and particularly movement that has an impact on businesses and does economic and social harm. That may come, however.”