Call for regional approach to pandemic

Three Councillors support the view of an expert

A group of Devon County Councillors are calling for a regional approach to the coronavirus epidemic in the South West to be carried out with intensive testing, tracing and quarantining to eliminate the virus.

Cllrs Hilary Ackland, Martin Shaw and Claire Wright have supported the call made by Dr Bharat Pankhania, Exeter University’s infectious disease and public health expert, to take advantage of the lockdown to introduce a regional approach to the epidemic in the South West.

According to latest Government data, there have been 98,476 “lab-confirmed” cases of COVID-19 in the UK and 12,868 deaths in hospitals related to the virus, but the South West has seen the fewest coronavirus deaths of any region of England – just 566 compared to 3,224 in London.

In terms of confirmed cases, Torbay has the sixth lowest number of cases of any upper tier local authority region in England.

The Devon County Council area has seen 426 cases confirmed – but has four times the population of each of the two areas – Bolton and Sutton – either side of it in the table, showing the prevalence of the disease is much less in the county than elsewhere in the country.

The Government is set to announce a further three week extension of the lockdown restrictions later today, but the three councillors on Devon County Council have said that while restrictions in Devon should not be lifted imminently, the disease could be more controllable in the region.

In a joint statement, the three councillors said: “While we do not believe the lockdown can be lifted imminently, effective control of the epidemic in the South West would be an important step forward towards a national solution and would enable local leaders to make the case for a regional approach to lifting the lockdown in due course.

“The South West is experiencing the epidemic in a different way from other regions. We have the lowest levels of hospitalisation and death from COVID-19 in the country. South West councils, MPs and the police have had some success in preventing second-home owners and tourists further spreading the virus.

“We therefore support the call by Dr Bharat Pankhania, Exeter University’s infectious disease and public health expert, to take advantage of the lockdown to introduce a regional approach to the epidemic in the South West, with intensive testing, tracing and quarantining to eliminate the virus.

“We call on Directors of Public Health in the region to devote all available resources to this approach, and on Devon MPs to press the Government to give the necessary support for this.”

Dr Pankhania, a senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter medical school, with field experience in the Sars and Ebola epidemics, this week told The Guardian the government needed to commit to testing and contact tracing, then start hiring and training contact tracers at scale.

He said: “Keep the shutdown until we know we can cope with patients. Use the opportunity to scale up manufacture of PPE and ventilators. When you feel you have amassed your PPE, test kits, the army needed to do the tests and army of contact testers, that is when you lift the shutdown. But you only do that when you know the test numbers are in a sustained downward trajectory.

“In an emergency you can recruit many people and get them to help you under supervision. We did this during the swine flu pandemic. We are not doing that now. There is no indication we are preparing for that now.”

In an interview with Channel 4, he added: “In the South West, the numbers are not so high and in those parts, we must as a matter of urgency, reintroduce contact tracing, isolation, testing, all those fundamentals of outbreak control we have been talking about.”

So far, there have been 339 positive tests in Cornwall along with 46 recorded deaths.

In Devon, the County Council local authority area has 426 confirmed cases of the virus while Plymouth has 163 and Torbay has 103.

NHS England says 81 coronavirus patients in the county have died – 34 at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, 22 at Torbay Hospital, 21 at the Royal Devon and Exeter and four at the North Devon District Hospital in Barnstaple.