AS COVID rates per 100,000 rise, council leader John Halsall is urging residents to do all they can to avoid spreading the virus.
While issuing a cautious welcome to the planned national ending of lockdown from Monday, July 19, he said common sense was still needed.
“It should be remembered why we started the lockdowns and processes in the first place: we started them not because people had covid, people were going to hospital with covid and dying. Now deaths in Wokingham are zero and they have been for some time.”
He said that there had been a small spike in May, but have now fallen away.
“It means that cases of covid are in an age group or cohort where, while they might get covid it’s not necessarily going to harm them,” he continued.
“That’s not universally true, obviously and I have to admit that it’s beyond my paygrade to make the decision whether we’ve got to the point that we have to live with covid or not, but so far statistics reflect that we started the restrictions to protect the NHS, protect hospitalisations and protect deaths and that has been fulfilled.”
He wanted residents to remember that they may not know if they or, if transmitting the virus to someone else, have underlying health conditions.
“Even if restrictions are lifted, please maintain the disciplines that you have had for the past 16 months in so far as you are able,” he said.
“We’ve got a very sophisticated, intelligent, compliant group of residents, they need to use common sense, ensuring that they keep safe. The disciplines will go a long way to do that.”
