Responding to Omicron

The latest data (up to 16 December) for Kent and Medway show a continuing rise in Covid infections. For Kent, the 7 day rate of infections per 100,000 population is 875, up 37.6% in a week. This is above the England average, though (only just) below that of the South East. Dartford (at 1264.7/ 100,000), Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells have the highest levels of infection. As elsewhere in the country, the Omicron variant is playing an increasing part in the spread of the virus.

Hospitalisations are increasing too, though so far at a relatively slow rate and are far below the levels seen in the early part of this year. The degree to which Omicron’s high transmission rate is offset by (possible) lower severity and the benefits of widespread vaccination remains uncertain.

KCC works alongside its partners (NHS, police, fire, district councils and others) in the Kent Resilience Forum (KRF) in responding to this latest phase of the pandemic. The KRF’s recent media release sets out the progress in the vaccine booster campaign - with a doubling of vaccinations in the last week and a record number (33,700) of jabs last Saturday, increased sites becoming available and communications to reinforce the need to get vaccinated or boosted (I recorded a video message last week as part of the campaign). Take up appears strong in relation to national trends. Earlier this week our Cabinet reviewed all the actions being taken to ensure that we are supporting the booster drive to the fullest possible extent.

The media release also sets out other areas of work carried out by KCC and Medway Council, including testing sites, contact tracing and the Kent Together advice and support service. It also includes links to vaccination bookings, location of vaccination centres across Kent and Medway and other information.

Half a million symptom-free Covid tests in Kent

Kent County Council’s Director of Public Health, Andrew Scott-Clark, has confirmed that half a million symptom free tests have been carried out in Kent. This is a remarkable outcome from a standing start just before Christmas. At that time, I visited (and took a test) at one of the two sites that were opening (on the Isle of Sheppey and in Thanet). Since then, a network of sites has been developed across the county. In the early stages in particular, we had vital support from military logistics teams, although the network has now been self-sustaining for some time.

The indications are that Kent amounts to more than ten per cent of symptom-free tests carried out across the country, and our neighbours and colleagues in Medway (whose testing regime started around ten days before Kent’s) also have very high incidence relative to their population. 

This is a remarkable achievement by the team led by Andrew Scott-Clark, and reflects the authority’s determination that the county would make its way out of the severe restrictions instituted before Christmas through a combination of symptom-free testing, local contact tracing and effective communication and enforcement. Symptom-free testing is set to continue until at least the end of June, and remains a vital tool in the effort to keep our infection rates low, especially as restrictions start to ease.

Crowdfunding Kent: KCC supports community-led recovery

As part of our commitment to supporting communities and Kent’s recovery from the pandemic, KCC has launched Crowdfund Kent with crowdfunding platform Spacehive. Crowdfund Kent will support community groups and projects that aid recovery from the Covid crisis, such as improvements to community facilities or initiatives that address financial distress or social isolation. KCC is contributing £500,000 in total and will allocate up to £20,000 or 50% of the project cost (more in exceptional circumstances in deprived areas) to individual schemes. 

I will be taking part in a webinar launch of the initiative on 17 March (details in the KCC media hub press release) and there will be further workshops to help develop schemes in March and April. The deadline for submitting schemes in this funding round is 28 April.

First steps on the road to recovery

The national road map to easing and ultimately ending Covid restrictions is very welcome. The pace may be cautious, but steady progress is surely preferable to measures that raise expectations but then have to take a step back or even be reversed. And all the while, the vaccination programme is making rapid progress.

I commented about the four key actions which we’ve tried to focus on in Kent - following the guidelines, symptom free testing (315,000 tests carried out in Kent, more than 2,000 symptom-free people tested positive and so able to self-isolate), contact tracing and enforcement. We’ll continue these actions in the weeks to come. Kent has come a very long way since New Year: from a 7 day figure of 900 cases per 100,000 and a high national outlier to 66.6 per 100,000 and just over half the national average. It’s a huge tribute to what people and communities across Kent have done; if we sustain that, we will stay on the road to recovery.

You can find the KCC press release here.

More testing sites, including Sevenoaks Community Centre

Following last week’s announcement, KCC today announced the opening of five additional symptom-free (asymptomatic) testing centres in the course of this week. This will bring the total across the county to 19, including two in Sevenoaks District. The second of these, opening on Friday, is in the Sevenoaks Community Centre in Cramptons Road, Bat and Ball. This should be very accessible for residents of Sevenoaks North and Darent Valley, especially in areas such as Otford.

The asymptomatic testing programme in Kent has now carried out over 50,000 tests, and this figure should now rise rapidly. The current 14 sites can carry out 14,000 tests per day, and this should rise to 19,000 by the end of the week.

You can find KCC’s media release about the new openings here.

2021 begins: Schools, testing sites and lockdown again

Happy 2021.

It’s over a fortnight - embracing Christmas and the New Year - since I last posted. There’s been a lot since then that I’ve just not had time to write up; on Sunday, 20 December, the French authorities blocked any HGVs and other vehicles crossing the Channel. This lasted for 48 hours, at the end of which vehicles were only able to make the journey if they had secured a negative Covid test. The resulting challenges of traffic management, driver welfare and impact on local communities (especially Dover) were intense and only started to ease around Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I’ll be writing more about transition, so may revert in more detail to those extraordinary days at that point.

The NewYear started with further controversy over whether primary schools should open to the majority of children, or should delay their start for a fortnight. The Department for Education ruled that eight of Kent’s twelve Districts should be considered under the ‘contingency framework’, meaning that general primary opening would be delayed for a fortnight, but that four Districts - Canterbury, Thanet, Dover and Folkestone and Hythe - should not. Neither I nor our public health team could see the rationale for this, and so Richard Long (Cabinet Member for Education and Skills) and I wrote to the Education Secretary, urging that the contingency framework should also be applied to these four Districts. This generated a lot of media interest (including Radio 4’s World at One - interview starts 28 minutes and 30 seconds in) but within a few hours was overtaken entirely by events.

As of last night, Kent - with the rest of the country - found itself in a third national lockdown. The acceleration of infections that we saw in Kent in November and early December, strongly linked to the new strand of the virus, has taken hold nationally. Much of our response reflects the approaches developed in the first and second lockdowns, and I will be returning to this in future posts. You can find our on the day response here.

The Prime Minister’s announcement came at the end of a day in which we had announced the establishment of twelve new asymptomatic testing centres, adding to the two (in Swale and Thanet) that we opened a week before Christmas. This gives testing centres in all of the twelve Districts, and more will be added in the coming weeks, resulting in two in each District. In Sevenoaks, the first centre will be in the Swanley youth club in St Mary’s road, and a further site in the District will be announced shortly. In these new circumstances, we continue to press forward our approach of contact tracing, testing, communication and enforcement, while supporting the NHS in its roll out of vaccination.

Now, Tier 4

Yesterday’s government announcement that Kent, along with London and much of the south east, was due to enter (from midnight last night) a new Tier 4 level of restrictions is a severe blow to the county and its residents just days before Christmas. The County Council will do everything we can to help and support our residents and businesses through this. Our statement is here.

The Tier 4 restrictions reimpose many of the features of the November national restrictions, with a requirement on residents to avoid unnecessary travel and to work from home if at all possible, while ‘non-essential’ retail, leisure centres, personal care facilities (such as hairdressers, nail salons etc) are required to close. This comes on top of the restrictions on the hospitality sector already in place. You can find the details of the restrictions here.

Painfully for many families, Tier 4 status also means that ‘Christmas bubbles’, enabling different households to come together for Christmas, no longer apply. Support bubbles for isolated individuals still do apply, however. 

After the statement from the Prime Minister, I joined a call (along with other local government leaders and chief executives) joined a call with the Communities Secretary, Robert Jenrick, and one of the government’s medical advisers. It was clear from this, as from the earlier press conference, that the new, fast-spreading strain of the virus played a central part in these new decisions. The stubbornly high (and then accelerating again) infection rates in Kent and Medway even amid national and then Tier 3 restrictions resulted in investigations that brought focused attention on the new strain and on its rapid spread throughout the South East. A number of areas in London and Essex now have higher infection rates than the levels seen in Swale, the Kent Borough with the highest rates.

The scientific advice is very clear, and the pressures on hospitals in Kent and Medway are severe: all Kent’s hospital trusts are at or (in most cases) well above the level of Covid admissions seen at the previous peak in April. So the decision is hard to argue with, even if its suddenness and timing is abrupt and even brutal. 

As set out in my previous post, we will continue to focus our efforts on local contact tracing, asymptomatic testing and constantly renewing our approach to communications and enforcement. We will also seek to support residents and businesses through this, and press government to review business support to better assist enterprises and individuals across Kent, with our network of very small firms and self-employment.

Taking the Test

 

This morning Andrew Scott-Clark, KCC’s Director of Public Health and I attended the site (Sheerness Working Men’s Club in Halfway on the Isle of Sheppey) of one of the two asymptomatic testing centres that will start carrying out tests tomorrow. The military planners whose giving us logistical support were present, along with representatives from Swale Borough Council. 

This was a chance to see the centre in operation and to brief and be interviewed by media representatives, including BBC South East and ITV Meridian. Andrew and I took the ‘lateral flow’ Covid test. I did not record exactly how long it took for the result (negative) to come through, but it was about half an hour or just a little longer. The centre staff were very helpful and the process smooth.

For tomorrow, invitations have gone out to key workers and their families, and we expect to then invite the wider local population.

In my interviews, I was asked - unsurprisingly and reasonably- about Kent’s high Covid -19 infection levels, and what can be done to reduce them. I emphasised the actions we are taking with respect to testing, local contact tracing and constant honing of our approach to communications and compliance. The full explanation for Kent’s extraordinary surge in infections, much of it during the period of the second national lockdown, remains unclear, though the emergence of a second, more infectious form of the virus may have played its part. Certainly there has been a recent surge across many parts of the south east, with many areas (such as large parts of our neighbours Essex, Surrey and East Sussex) joining Kent in Tier 3.

Nonetheless, as the Health Secretary pointed out in Parliament today, rates in our county are exceptionally high: “Be really cautious in Kent. It is the area of the country which has the biggest problem.” We are under no illusions as to the scale of the task in turning this round.

Asymptomatic testing: the first sites

Targeted asymptomatic testing is an important part of the efforts by Kent County Council and our partners to contain and ultimately reduce the alarmingly high levels of Covid-19 infections in the County. (This is alongside local contact tracing, communications and enforcement measures). 

Earlier in the month, we secured military logistical support for testing, though we had been in talks on this  for some time prior to entering Tier 3. At the weekend, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) confirmed its support for large-scale asymptomatic testing in Tier 3 areas. KCC has been working with District and Borough Councils and securing sites, and the first two will commence operations this coming Friday, 18 December. They will be in areas of very high infection incidence, in Halfway on the Isle of Sheppey and Ramsgate. People will be invited to take the test by letter or email. 

Further sites will be rolled out in the near future, with the aim to have two sites in each District. Both the priority given to Districts and the location of the sites will be determined by infection levels. 

As is clear from the figures updated daily on KCC’s website, infection levels across the county continue to increase, with all Districts now above the national average and the County as a whole two and a half times that level. Tomorrow’s national announcement about tiering levels will clearly not bring any relief to the County’s Tier 3 status. There is a lot to do to turn this round.

Kent in Tier 3

Today’s government announcement that Kent as a whole is being placed in Tier 3, the highest level of Covid-19 restrictions, comes as a severe blow to residents and businesses across the County. 

Covid cases have risen sharply in Kent in recent weeks. Up until around the middle of October, Kent’s incidence (cases per 100,000 over 7 days) was far below the national average, and even below the South East average. As of 21 November, however, Kent’s figure was 274.3, compared with national average of 207.1 and a South East average of 157.3. (Neighbouring Medway, however, stood at 423.9). The acceleration began in Swale and has taken in much of northern and coastal Kent. Swale’s rates (528.4) and Thanet’s (492.3) are among the highest in the country. Rates across other parts of the county - in particular, in Districts and Boroughs such as Tunbridge Wells, Ashford and Sevenoaks – are much lower. The county-wide nature of the restrictions has generated anger and bewilderment in those areas with lower rates. 

Our focus – as made clear in a statement issued today – is on getting the county out of Tier 3 as fast as possible. That is a task for us in local government (and our localised delivery of test and trace, in support of the national system, starts tomorrow) but also for all our residents. The quicker we get infection rates down, especially in the most affected parts of the county, the sooner these damaging restrictions can be lifted. I will be taking part in a press conference tomorrow afternoon with our Director of Public Health, Andrew Scott-Clark, and colleagues from Medway and from the NHS, tomorrow afternoon. 

Care Home Support: Kent's submission

On 14 May, the Care Minister Helen Whately wrote to Council Leaders (including me) setting out the government's plans for supporting care homes in tackling the impacts of Covid-19, including a £600 million Infection Control Fund. It also has a significant role for local authorities.

The Infection Control Fund (Kent's share of which is almost £19 million) will be channelled through local authorities, although three quarters of it will be allocated to care homes on a sum per bed formula.  However, local authorities will have a role in assuring that the money is spent on infection control, as well as drawing up, along with local NHS leaders, a Care Home Support Plan. This is incorporated in a letter setting out both the financial (and other) support that the local authority is providing to the sector and the mechanisms of monitoring and support to the sector in tackling infection. The letter is accompanied by a completed template profiling the situation of the care sector in terms of infection control.

As the County Councils Network pointed out, this is a significant extension of the role of local authorities in social care, both in terms of taking us into a more regulatory role and in building connections with the many care homes with whom we do not have a direct relationship (since they support only 'self-funders' rather than those supported by KCC). Although it raises legal, capacity and other challenges for local authorities, it is in my view (and that of KCC0 overall a welcome and certainly important step.

Care Home Support Plans were required to be submitted on Friday, 29 May. You can find Kent's letter and completed template via this page of the KCC website.

Fixing the roads: working through the lockdown

On social media and elsewhere, some people have asked, "With the roads so quiet during the lockdown, why doesn't the council do more work on potholes, resurfacing and the like?" Well, we have.

In the period since the start of the lockdown, KCC highways teams have patched 89,212 m2 of road surface and filled in 5,669 potholes. This has sustained or increased the rate of work since before lockdown, while more extensive resurfacing work has got under way since the start of May.

There are challenges to delivering this. Staff availability during the crisis, both at KCC and at our contractors, was identified early as a potential problem, although it has proved possible to continue to deliver. There has also been the need to take careful account of government and industry advice and to ensure safe working during the crisis.

Early on in my leadership of the County Council, I was determined to ensure that we committed all our possible resources to highways maintenance and we have an ambitious programme for this year. While almost everything in the Council's plans is made less certain by the impact, financial and otherwise, of the Covid-19 crisis, it is good that we are able to make progress on our roads now.

You can read a detailed press release from KCC on this here.  

Funding: the interest continues

Further to yesterday's post, the financial pressures on local government remain in the spotlight, with two councils (Liverpool and Windsor & Maidenhead) warning that they might have to issue Section 114 notices (a brake on all but essential spending, triggered when a council hits financial crisis).

This evening, I gave a live interview to BBC South East Today on the issue. You can find the report here - it is the top news item (but will only be available to view for the next 24 hours). I reiterated my argument that central government's commitment of £3.2bn in two tranches of support for local authorities is very welcome, but does not address the full scale of the problem. For the present, cash flow is not a pressing problem for Kent authorities, because of the two funding tranches, the acceleration of payment of government grants for social care and the deferral of payment of business rates to the centre. However, the problem for the full financial year remains; for the combined total of Kent and Medway authorities, pressures (including anticipated shortfalls in council tax) come to around £370 million, while the support from government comes to some £99 million.

Ministers have said repeatedly that local authorities must do what it takes to meet the crisis and "we will back you." £3.2bn is a significant down payment on that pledge, but it must be delivered in full.

PPE: progress but always precarious

There has been huge, and justified national attention on the issue of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the Covid-19 crisis. Pressures are felt at the levels of national and global supply chains, but Kent County Council, working through the Kent Resilience Forum and our commercial company, Kent Commercial Services, has undertaken extensive work to deliver PPE within the county. 

This is separate from, and additional to the several drops of supplies from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), which I and other senior Members and officers have consistently lobbied for. All this was done from a starting point where KCC held only modest stocks of PPE for the use of our own staff,  while care providers sourced their own supplies. 

At close of business on 23 April, we had supplied over 1.4 million pieces of PPE in over 700 separate deliveries since the 3 April.  The table below provides details of the equipment delivered – all of it essential to support the safe provision of services to the most vulnerable. 

Items	Total
Type IIR Masks (or equivalent)	258,400
Respirator masks (or equivalent)	10,660
Extra-large gloves	10,260
Large gloves	251,420
Medium gloves	380,300
Small gloves	155,400
Aprons	319,200
Protective Goggles	14,307
Sanitiser 100ml	4,825
Sanitiser 500ml	120
Sanitiser 5L	112
Clinical waste bags.	16,000

Deliveries have happened every day, with the exception of Easter Sunday, and even that day was covered by our daily out of hours service.  The weekend of 18 and 19 April saw 170 separate deliveries.

All PPE and deliveries have been made free of charge.  By working closely with our partners in the Kent Resilience Forum our supply chain, which includes Kent based suppliers, has got and continues to get more robust.  We now have more substantial stocks of some key items including over 600,000 of the Type IIR Surgical Mask with more on the way, which were in very short supply only a few weeks ago. 

None of this is plain sailing and some items, such as Respirator Masks, are still quite scarce, albeit we have now sourced a reliable supply.  Demand for equipment and deliveries from KCC continues to rise.  The average daily delivery of Type IIR Masks over the last 21 days has been 12,300.  On 23^rd April 25,000 were despatched with over 29,000 already ordered for delivery on the 24^th April.  Forecasting demand has been and continues to be very difficult, exacerbated by the evolving national guidance on the correct use of PPE which has been a challenge both in terms of supply but also for our own services and provides in their provision of clear guidance to front line carers and staff.

There have been recent reports that a national online portal allowing primary and social care providers to order supplies of PPE will not be fully operational for another five weeks.  This acts as a reminder that even with the huge amount of work described here, the situation will always remain fragile, reflecting the rapid use of the equipment, changes in national guidance and fluctuations in deliveries from the centre.  Given these extreme difficulties that are widely acknowledged to exist in this area, it is right to be proud of the excellent work that has been done by KCC and the KRF. But the situation continues to evolve and remains precarious.