Cheshire East Council remains concerned about the increase in Covid-19 cases across the borough.
Cheshire East was designated as an Enhanced Response Area on 14 June, but since then cases of the highly transmissible Delta variant have continued to rise and not just in Macclesfield and Crewe, but more recently in Congleton, Middlewich and Sandbach.
Council teams in public health, education and regulatory services along with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), NHS partners and neighbouring local authorities, are all working together to ensure the outbreaks are closely monitored and additional testing resources have been brought into the borough along with mobile vaccination pop-ups, to help curb the latest increase of Covid-19 positive cases.
Dr Matt Tyrer, director of public health at Cheshire East Council, said: "We have all worked together for such a long time over the last sixteen months to keep people safe and I want to thank everyone for following the guidance.
"But despite all our efforts, we are now seeing worrying patterns of infection emerging. We can't afford to become complacent otherwise we will keep seeing rates rise and our schools and businesses will continue suffering disruption.
"We all have to be socially responsible and do the right thing for ourselves and for each other. This includes young people as the majority of new cases are in the 10 to 39 age group and whether you are a young person or an adult, it's in our hands to do the right thing."
Councillor Jill Rhodes, Cheshire East Council adults and health committee chair, said: "We are so close to our lives returning to normal, but now is not the time to let our guard down. Hands, space, face, fresh air, along with getting both jabs when they are offered to you along with regular testing, is more important than ever."
For more information on testing, vaccinations and self-isolation support, go to the council's webpage at: www.cheshireeast.gov.uk/covid19
Comments
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They'll just blame you & me for taking our own responsibility and not correctly following their ever-so-clear guidelines.
Infections (mostly of the Delta variant) are rising at a truly alarming rate in the UK. Chris Whitty expects 100,000 cases per day and it may well go much higher than that. Thanks to the success of the vaccines (an NHS success as it was thankfully kept out of the hands of Tory cronies, unlike PPE and the £35 BILLION failed Test & Trace system) the direct link between infections and deaths has been largely broken - for now. However, given that most of the world is un-vaccinated and will remain so for some time yet, the virus has ample opportunity to mutate, which of course it will. There is every chance that some of those mutations will side-step the vaccines.
However, that aside, more infections WILL mean more hospital admissions and more deaths, just not at anything like the rate we saw prior to the vaccination program. There will be a great deal more of the virus around if Johnson's proposals go ahead, so perhaps there will be more cases of 'Long Covid'. If you are double-vaccinated (some people can't be) and if you do not suffer reduced immunity through illness or medical treatment, this 'UK Experiment' might work for you. Until a new game-changing variant comes along.
Mask wearing is altruistic; it protects others from a potentially infected wearer more than it protects the wearer from a potentially infected anti-masker. Making the personal choice to wear one will not offer you much protection if others less socially responsible decide to exercise their right to go unmasked - and they will. Giving anti-maskers the oxygen of official consent at the time of an exponentially-rising infection rate hardly seems wise.
Manchester's Mayor Andy Burnham wants to see mask wearing continue to be compulsory on public transport, which unlike pubs and restaurants many people have no choice but to use. He actually has the power to mandate it on the Metrolink trams but won't be doing so, because, as he says, "with no government mandate on public transport mask wearing it would be unenforceable on the trams and merely a source of conflict".
If 'The UK Experiment' doesn't work, it will be very difficult to put the genie back into the bottle. How lucky do YOU feel?
There really does seem to be a UK Government initiative to reduce the world population.
He claims he is leaving mask wearing to 'personal discretion', completely ignoring that an important aspect of government is implementing rules that protect the populace from the actions of others - such as enforcing speed limits on roads; we don't leave those to 'personal discretion'.
Mask wearing protects others rather than that protecting the wearer, so while we face an exponential rise in the covid infection rate, removing the requirement to wear masks in shops and on public transport (places where one may have no choice but to go) is a populist-driven abdication of care by Johnson's government.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYTyi2pFXxk&t=346s