Sheffield heath boss’s grim winter warning as 'all conditions for second wave are present'

Greg Fell, the Director for Public Health Sheffield, has explained this plan in further detail, outlining the steps the council would take to ensure that everybody is able to work together to limit the impact of outbreaks, which he says will happen ‘for sure’, and the transmission of the infection.

"This is not just about managing outbreaks, narrowly defined as an outbreak in a school or a care home or a workplace,” he said.

"For sure, they will happen but really, what the plan is about is managing the transmission of the virus wherever that is and keeping opportunities for transmission low so that we can give the city confidence that we can open up and unlock the lockdown and in doing so contain the virus and keep the level of circulating virus low.”

Mr Fell said that the plan for the city was based on ‘three broad principles’: to ‘stop’ the disease form spreading, to ‘know’ where outbreaks are a risk and to ‘respond’ appropriately wherever transmission of the disease is highlighted.

“Local testing capacity is important and local accessibility is important and we are continuing to push that,” he added. “In every decision that we make we will be thinking ‘what’s the potential here for the transmission of the virus’.”

He explained that the ‘surveillance’ of the disease was central to the plan to prevent its transmission and that it is important to “pick up cases early before cases become clusters and pick up outbreaks early.”

The main way this will be done is using the NHS Test, Trace and Isolate system.

Mr Fell said: “The bit that often gets forgotten is the isolate bit. If I’ve been recommended to isolate that’s because I may have been exposed to somebody with this illness and I may be incubating that illness and we know that there is a phase that is the asymptomatic phase where I can be infectious to others but I don’t even recognise the symptoms.

"So if I am recommended to isolate that means isolate and stay at home it doesn’t mean go to the shops or the cinema when the cinemas reopen. There’s a key message for all of us there: don’t be a contact.”

With perfect conditions for a second wave of the virus approaching in the colder months, Mr Fell appealed to the people of Sheffield to respect the guidelines around social distancing and not to go back to old behaviour as the lockdown is eased.

"The thing we’re trying to avoid is exponential growth, so if R goes above one and we get indications that the virus spread is growing again then we get into the space where we think about putting back in more restrictive measures,” he said.

"We’ve seen that in late February and early March. Nobody wants to go back there. Another lockdown will be economically and socially damaging. We need to take responsibility for avoiding it.

“The next two months are really important. Winter is coming. All the conditions needed for a second wave are present. We must reduce and keep the infection rate low before the autumn and winter because the infection isn’t going to disappear.”

He called for “continued respect for physical distance and isolation, fast an accurate available diagnostics, and treatment of vaccines which are some time away.

"Everybody in the city has to do this. I can’t secure success here if everybody just pretends it is all over and goes back to behaving how they did a year ago. We will be living with Covid for some considerable time to come.”