The second wave of coronavirus has proved far more deadly and difficult to deal with than the first. As Norfolk passes 1,000 deaths and the country 100,000, Tom Bristow looks at whether more could and should have been done to prevent such wide-scale losses.
It took 260 days for Norfolk to reach the chilling milestone of 500 people dying from coronavirus. The next 500 deaths took just 44 days.
Any lingering hopes that the region’s geography meant it would be spared the worst of Covid, as it was last spring, have been extinguished by a flood of awful statistics.
Norfolk's infection and death rates are still below the national average, but that is no consolation to the loved ones of the 1,337 people who have now died in the county within 28 days of testing positive.
The UK, meanwhile, has the highest death toll in Europe with 103,000 deaths.
Despite the early success of the vaccine rollout, more than 1,000 readers who filled out a survey on our website on Thursday were unimpressed with the government's handling of the pandemic. Three-quarters of people said it had not responded well.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said this week that he was “deeply sorry” for the lives lost but the government had done "everything that we could”.
He also said now was not the time to learn lessons, but Labour accused the Conservatives of “monumental mistakes”.
Those mistakes have been well-covered. Some are clear with hindsight, but many were pointed out at the time; not closing our borders to people from virus hotspots sooner, locking down too late, abandoning community testing early on, then spending billions on a track and trace system which couldn’t track and trace tens of thousands of people.
In fact, some would argue that from that moment in March where the prime minister proudly declared he would be shaking hands with covid patients - the country was behind where it needed to be in tackling the pandemic. And has arguably never recovered.
Mid Norfolk Conservative MP George Freeman said: “This pandemic is not over yet - people are dying each day - and everyone’s focus needs to be on defeating this virus. This is not a time for political point scoring. We need to learn lessons but the time for enquiries will come when it’s over."
But he added: "The pandemic has exposed long incubated serious weaknesses in UK public health and our over-centralised and top:down health system: but it has also highlighted the best: the community spirit, success of Operation Shield, local joint-working, extraordinary dedication of our frontline healthcare staff and the brilliance of our life science sector in developing vaccines and leading the world in vaccination rates."
‘Learn from Asia’
North Norfolk Conservative MP Duncan Baker, meanwhile, defended the government’s record.
“Given that there was never a blueprint to tackle the biggest crisis since the Second World War - there will be areas that we can reflect on and say: ‘we could have done that better’, but by and large, the response has been very capable,” he said.
But Alex Stewart, from patient group Healthwatch Norfolk, said lessons had to be learned immediately if lives were going to be saved. “I’m worried that some of the mistakes will be forgotten or glossed over,” he said.
“I don't envy politicians but there has been some posturing locally and nationally.”
While he praised the response of authorities in Norfolk, he said the region had felt a “detrimental effect from national decisions”, citing both lockdown and closing international borders as coming too late.
“I still feel we have not learned from South-East Asian countries, for example, about locking down early.”
Mr Baker agreed borders should have shut sooner but added: “The UK is a major international hub. The ability to close borders overnight is far more of a challenge (than Australia or New Zealand) because we are a very interconnected country.”
Mr Freeman said with hindsight the UK, along with other countries, had locked down "a bit slow" in March, but added: "Lockdowns are hugely damaging to people's livelihoods, mental health, family welfare, children's education and life chances."
Keep it local
Emma Corlett, deputy Labour leader at the county council, said she remembered seeing data in the autumn which showed lockdown needed to happen sooner the second time around.
“There was really good modelling from Public Health locally which projected the worst-case scenario on hospitals. The warnings were there from a very early stage last autumn and cases were only going in one direction.
“Norfolk MPs were being shown that data and yet some of them were saying that restrictions should be eased - that we should go into tier 1 from tier 2.”
She also said local public health teams should have been put in charge of the test and trace system, rather than it being outsourced to private companies. Many councils have now set up their own systems to find people who have been in contact with confirmed cases.
The Norfolk system is reaching 90pc of cases, while, after hitting lows of less than 60pc, the national system has also improved.
“Local public health teams have done a very good job sometimes with one hand tied behind their backs,” Ms Corlett said, citing delays in getting staff at food processing plants tested.
Mid Norfolk Conservative MP George Freeman agreed that when an outbreak at Cranswick Country Foods began in Watton in October, local councils should have been given responsibility for tracing and testing. This newspaper revealed at the time that workers there were not tested for more than a week.
Mr Freeman described the national track and trace as "one of the weakest bits of the pandemic".
Problems with the national testing system came to the fore when children returned to school in the autumn. It was initially overwhelmed and people were asked to travel hundreds of miles for a test.
Those problems have now been fixed, but Ms Corlett said it took too long to get a walk-in testing centre in Norwich.
England’s deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam also said this week that he regretted the lack of testing capacity at the start of the pandemic.
When asked at a press conference on Thursday what lessons could be learned, the council’s Conservative leader Andrew Proctor would not be drawn but praised the “massive response” in Norfolk from all public bodies and volunteers.
Norfolk’s director of public health, Dr Louise Smith, added: “We will need to do a large amount of analysis to take a fully formed view.”
Alongside 1300 deaths there have been 34,000 infections in Norfolk, putting it below the national average, but some areas of the county had at times amongst the highest Covid rates in England.
But Mr Stewart said: “There is a whole host of stuff which Norfolk has done superbly. The Norfolk Resilience Forum which the county council set up very early on in the pandemic to deliver food and medicines and make phone calls has done an incredible job. It has brought out the best in local government and social care.”
Norfolk has also been helping out neighbouring areas.
The Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital is a regional surge centre meaning it has been taking patients from other hospitals which have run out of capacity.
Essex’s NHS said this week it would have been in “serious trouble” if the NNUH had not taken its patients.
Scenes described by NNUH staff on the wards are nightmarish, army medics have been needed to keep the hospital going, and deaths have soared to 476, with half of all Covid deaths since March 2020 happening this month. Covid patients are taking up around a third of all hospital beds.
But nevertheless, it has kept going and latest data on Thursday shows hospitals may now be at their peak of Covid patients. The NNUH was treating more than 300 patients earlier in January, but that number is now slowly dropping.
In more good news, 1300 patients treated for Covid at the NNUH have gone home.
When asked what lessons locally and nationally could be learned from the pandemic, chief executive of Norfolk and Waveney Clinical Commissioning Group Melanie Craig did not say, but praised staff for their “incredible effort”.
The £1m masks
One of the fiercest criticisms of the government has been for not getting enough personal protective equipment (PPE) to front line workers.
This newspaper ran a front page in April highlighting a desperate shortages of PPE for health and care staff. One doctor resorted to asking her friends if anyone had a snorkelling mask.
As national supplies of PPE broke down, the county council spent almost £1m flying in face masks from China. It later admitted it was a gamble but thankfully the masks were suitable.
During this wave, supplies have been more secure as PPE is now being manufactured in the UK, but with care home cases and deaths rising, Ms Corlett questioned whether government guidance on what PPE should be worn was strict enough.
“This is still a really pressing issue,” she said. “Do workers really have suitable PPE?”.
Care home deaths are now higher in Norfolk than in the first wave and the county has one of the largest numbers of care home deaths in England.
The government says it is following guidance from the World Health Organisation on the level of PPE.
Those in contact with Covid patients wear a surgical face mask, but hospitals have tried to go further by bringing in more heavy duty FFP3 masks. In Bavaria, residents now have to wear heavier duty masks to go to the shops, yet in the UK health workers are still being told they are safe with a surgical mask. The NNUH has gone beyond that guidance and fitted many of its staff with FFP3 masks.
MP Duncan Baker said: "At the beginning of the pandemic there was a lot of criticism about the shortage of ventilators and PPE, but to be honest, we don’t have a manufacturing base like the Germans, and because we had to wait to import, that hurt us. But we’ve obviously got on top of it.”
Finally, furlough
Mr Baker said there were “an awful lot of positives that we have done extremely well”, citing the furlough scheme, where the government pays up to 80pc of workers’ wages.
A fifth of all private sector workers are now on furlough and the scheme has cost almost £50 billion, but it has saved the country from mass unemployment.
“The furlough scheme and the financial packages have been lauded as one of the best economic support packages in the world,” Mr Baker said.
Mr Freeman added the "unprecedented" support from the Treasury and avoided "economic destruction".
Greg Adjemian, co-founder of G&D ventures which owns the Wildebeest at Stoke Holy Cross and the Ingham Swan in north Norfolk, said the furlough scheme had been “exceptional”
“The financial support has exceeded my expectations,” he said. “Where I think the government could have done better is the messaging they were putting out.
“The economy has been crucified by the pandemic which hospitality businesses – flung between the extremes of Eat Out to Help Out and curfews, take-away only measures and tier systems – have borne the brunt of."
What you can do
National government of course cannot be blamed for every part of how the pandemic has been handled. Local councils, public health teams, hospitals, care homes, indeed all of us can make decisions to help overcome coronavirus.
At the most basic level that means following the rules as individuals, but Beccles GP Tim Morton said a key lesson was to get healthier, thus reducing our risk of getting seriously ill or dying if we do catch Covid.
“We have a responsibility for our own health," he said. "But as a society we need to tackle huge social inequalities too because deprived areas have been much harder hit.”
Research by this newspaper showed the poorer parts of Norwich, King’s Lynn and Great Yarmouth have had four times as many coronavirus cases as the more affluent neighbourhoods.
Mr Baker also said high population density and obesity were behind the UK’s high death rate.
He said: “Why are we in a situation where we have the highest deaths per capita?
“We’ve got one of the highest population densities, and we have an aging demographic. Our obesity rate is higher than some European countries.”
One benefit that is likely to come out of Covid is a renewed focus on health and inequality. After becoming seriously ill with Covid, Boris Johnson went on a health drive and appealed to the nation to slim down.
But a study from the Social Market Foundation shows it is not as simple as politicians telling us to get fit. They identified large areas of the country where poverty, poor transport and a lack of large supermarkets limited access to cheap fruit and vegetables.
‘Incredible effort’
But where the UK compares well to other countries is on its vaccine rollout. The government has often been derided for promising a “world beating” response to the pandemic - and failing to deliver - but it can use that accolade for the vaccine programme.
Only Israel and the United Arab Emirates have vaccinated a higher percentage of its people. The UK has given out 7.5m jabs - meaning one in ten of us have now had at least one dose. The next best performing European country is Denmark, where only 3pc of people have been vaccinated.
In Norfolk and Waveney, more than 80pc of over 80s have had the vaccine, which is better than the national average. By Sunday all over 80s should have had their first dose.
Mr Stewart, from Healthwatch, said: “We are getting really good reports on the way vaccine centres are being managed.”
Professor Paul Hunter from Norwich Medical School said it would take up to three weeks for the vaccine to work and longer to start to have an impact on case numbers.
But with that hope on the horizon, a time is coming when we can look forward to building back our lives, our region and our country. That cannot be done, however, without taking a long hard look at how we find ourselves in another lockdown, with no end date, a year after the virus first emerged - and why we have lost so many loved ones.
Additional reporting by Stuart Anderson, Noah Vickers and Eleanor Pringle.
ANALYSIS
Every death from coronavirus is a grim milestone. But, as the figure surpasses 1,000 in Norfolk and Waveney, political editor Richard Porritt outlines why difficult questions must be asked of our politicians
Picking your enemies is as important as picking your friends in politics.
And Boris Johnson’s route to Downing Street was aided and abetted by some very clever choices.
When he stood against Ken Livingstone as London mayor the firebrand left winger had little chance against Mr Johnson’s new breed of celebrity politics.
As Mr Livingstone’s rhetoric focussed on his view that the Conservatives were a nasty party, Mr Johnson arrived at hustings swinging from the back of a Routemaster bus and waving wildly at a growing band of adoring fans.
And when he sat down to write two columns focussing on Europe – one in favour of remaining and the other backing Britain to quit – he quickly realised that Brexit offered him the best chance to clamber to high office.
But Covid-19 is not an adversary like the European Union or Red Ken. And Mr Johnson would never have chosen this enemy.
At some stage in the future there will a public inquiry on the coronavirus response. And it is without doubt that decisions taken in the last 12 months will hang heavy over Mr Johnson’s legacy.
He had hoped to be remembered as the prime minister that “got Brexit done”. As it stands that may well be a foot note in his political epitaph.
Did the United Kingdom lockdown soon enough last spring? Did the country open up again too quickly? Was Eat Out to Help Out worth the health risk? Should the scientific advice urging the shutters to come down once again last autumn ignored? Why were people allowed to mix at Christmas?
The response to the pandemic will dominate the news and political cycles long after all 67 million people in the UK have been given an arm full of AstraZeneca, Moderna or Novavax.
And it is absolutely the right thing to ask those questions. And it is absolutely right to start asking them now.
Yes there have been successes – as it stands almost eight million people have had a vaccine. This is thanks to a gargantuan effort on the ground and some very nimble, swift work by the UK back in the autumn.
There will also be praise for the initial response to the economic crisis. Furlough, at least initially, saved jobs and businesses.
But this government has not got everything right. No government of any denomination would have.
Lessons must be learned from both successes and mistakes.
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