Local lockdown in Sheffield a 'matter of when, not if', says city's health chief, as Covid infection rate tops 200

Sheffield’s weekly Covid-19 infection rate has soared to 233.1 new cases per 100,000 people, with 299 new cases of coronavirus being confirmed on one day last week.

Greg Fell, the city’s director of public health, now believes localised restrictions, like the ban on households mixing in other parts of England, are inevitable in Sheffield.

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Asked how far off a local lockdown we are, he told BBC Radio Sheffield today: “My sense is it’s a matter of time and it’s a matter of when, not if. I couldn’t judge when but I sense we’ll be in the space that other councils have had an imposed lockdown over the next month. I would be surprised if we last that long.”

Mr Fell said that he expected a local lockdown in Sheffield would be similar to those already in place elsewhere, with households banned from mixing but no requirement for pubs or other venues to close.

And he claimed that whatever restrictions might be imposed, ‘it doesn’t take us away from the basics’ like washing our hands thoroughly and regularly and restricting the number of people we mix with to reduce to spread of the virus.

"It’s the basics and the behaviour that will get us out of this rather than something that we call a lockdown, which is shorthand for intensification of interventions, and these types of interventions take away some of our freedoms,” he told Toby Foster.

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"We don’t particularly want to go there or be there, so it’s beholden on us all to do the right thing.”

He added that it was hard to find a ‘happy medium’ between shutting everything down, which would cause economic and social harm, and keeping things open while protecting people from ‘what’s a dangerous respiratory virus, make no bones about that’.

Asked whether another national lockdown would be the best option, he claimed that would likely last for three to four months and would only ‘kick the can further down the road’ by temporarily suppressing the spread of the virus.

"What we need is permanent shift in behaviour in terms of live in an adapted way, maybe while we wait for a vaccine. Who knows when that will arrive but certainly I think we’re going to have to learn to live in an adapted way,” he said

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"I want Test and Trace, particularly the contact bit of Test and Trace, to be much better than it is. It’s OK but OK isn’t good enough actually.

"There are things the public need to do and things that public services need to do.”

The University of Sheffield today revealed that nearly 500 students and staff have now tested positive for coronavirus.

Mr Fell said cases were rising fastest among 18 to 30-year-olds as a whole, not just students, but the biggest worry comes when it spreads to those aged over 60, who are at greater risk.

“When, and as we are seeing, the virus starts to get into the older cohort, that’s when we’ll start to see hospitals filling up again, as is happening in other parts of the country but not yet here,” he said.