Lockdown working but we're 'in for the long haul' says Sheffield health chief

Greg Fell, the director of public health for Sheffield, was speaking as the city entered its fourth week of lockdown, and just days after it had recorded its one-hundredth death.

However, he said that despite the horrendous death toll, all the indications were that the unprecedented measures were having the desired effect.

He said: “The lockdown is working and the signs are that it is having a big impact in reducing the growth in the number of cases. We are nowhere near the worst-case scenario and we won’t get there if we follow on this trend.

“So I wanted to say thank you - I am in lockdown as well and it is a pain. But I suspect we will be in this for the long haul and it is impossible for me to say at this stage how long that will be.”

Mr Fell said widespread criticism that the strict lockdown imposed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson on March 23 came too late may prove correct with hindsight, but was impossible to prove at this stage.

He said: “There wasn’t a great deal of circulating virus at that time and it took off awfully quickly. It may be that we should have locked down a week before we did but it is impossible to say and only a full analysis of all the facts will decide that.

“It is worth reflecting that at the time we did it there was an awful lot of pushback that it was too soon, but we have done what we have done nationally now and we have no real choice but to see that through until the end of the first wave of the epidemic.”

When the lockdown is finally lifted, Mr Fell said it was likely the UK would revert to its original ‘contain’ strategy, with a much greater level of community testing and contact tracing, in the hope of avoiding a second wave of infection later in the year.

“Public Health England did that heroically for almost two months and bought us a lot of time but they became overwhelmed,” he said.

“There is no point in doing that again at the moment because there are just too many cases - but if we do get back there we will need to dramatically upscale to both testing and contact tracing.”

And he also acknowledged that the level of personal protective equipment or PPE provided to frontline staff - particularly in the city’s care homes - had not been good enough.

He said: “The supply chain is a lot better than it was but it is still not as good as it needs to be. The Government has worked really hard over the last week and a half but it is still not perfect.

“You will still find people who will say I didn’t have this or that and that is not good enough.”