The Times - UK (2020-06-29)

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the times | Monday June 29 2020 2GM 9

News


The coronavirus outbreak in Britain is
“on a knife edge” and cases are likely to
increase over the weeks to come, a
senior government adviser has warned.
Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the
Wellcome Trust and a member of the
Scientific Advisory Group for Emer-
gencies (Sage), said he was worried
about a spike in infections even before
the further easing of restrictions that is
planned for next weekend.
He told The Andrew Marr Show on
the BBC yesterday: “In truth the restric-
tions started to be lifted towards the
end of May, the beginning of June,
around that bank holiday.
“I would predict that we will start to
see a few increases in cases towards the
end of June or the first week of July.
“We’re on a knife edge, it’s very
precarious, the situation, particularly in
England at the moment, and I would
anticipate we would see an increase in
new cases over the coming weeks.”
From July 4 businesses including
restaurants, pubs, cinemas and hotels
will be able to reopen in England, along
with places of worship, libraries, com-
munity centres and outdoor play-
grounds and gyms.
Two households will be able to meet
indoors as well as outdoors. People will
also be able to stay overnight away from
their homes with members of their own
household or members of one other
household, provided that they remain
socially distanced.
Although lower case numbers mean
it is now “reasonable” to open up the

Plans for Leicester to be the first area to
enter a local lockdown after a surge in
coronavirus cases took council bosses
by surprise, they said yesterday.
Matt Hancock, the health secretary,
is said to have been looking into what
legislation would be required after it
was revealed there had been 658 virus
cases in the Leicester area in the fort-
night to June 16.
Although Priti Patel, the home secre-
tary, confirmed the plans in a television
appearance yesterday and a local MP
welcomed the move, Sir Peter Soulsby,
Leicester city mayor, said that his team
had been “taken by surprise” by the idea
because that “certainly wasn’t the terms
in which we’ve been talking”.
He also said that the Department of
Health and Social Care (DHSC) had
been slow to share the figures on which
they were basing their decision, with
hospital admissions and death
numbers going down “exactly in

Lockdown plan catches city by surprise


proportion to the decline elsewhere in
the country”.
“We don’t know if there is anything
there at all,” he said. The DHSC shared
more data on test results from the city
with the council on Thursday, he said,
but this did not include information on
people’s ethnicity or place of work,
which would help target interventions.
While mobile testing units have been
sent to the city, Sir Peter said co-
ordinating with government had been
“incredibly frustrating”. He said: “Al-
most every day last week, we had to
argue for them to keep on doing testing
here. They were talking about pulling
out one of the testing stations. We’ve
been diverted by an enormous amount
of time spent just persuading them to do
what I would have thought was the ob-
vious, which was to up the level of test-
ing in the city, not withdraw it.”
Five schools and some supermarkets
in the city have closed after staff tested
positive, while Samworth Brothers said
a “handful” of workers at its Leicester

sandwich factory had contracted the
virus.
There are particular concerns about
the potential of the virus to spread
among the city’s Asian community,
where people are more likely to live in
multi-generational households.
Claudia Webbe, Labour MP for
Leicester East, told the Leicestershire-
Live website: “In my view, we need to go
back to the standard of lockdown we
had at the beginning.”
Keith Neal, emeritus professor of the
epidemiology of infectious diseases at
the University of Nottingham, said:
“Defining the specific area will be one
of the largest problems. Local authority
boundaries can run down the middle of
the street with one side in one local
authority and the opposite in another.”
A spokesman for the DHSC said:
“Based on the latest data, there are now
four mobile testing units deployed and
thousands of home testing kits avail-
able, to ensure anyone in the area who
needs a test can get one.”

Kat Lay

News


food ads in fight against obesity


We’re on a knife edge


and cases will go up,


science adviser warns


Kat Lay Health Correspondent economy, Sir Jeremy said, people
should still be “really cautious”.
“There is no zero-risk in any of this,”
he said. “We’re not at the stage where
the virus has disappeared.”
He said he expected a “true second
wave” in October or November, and
that it was vital for government track
and trace systems to be fully up and
running before then.
“Come the winter, come the reopen-
ing of schools, which is absolutely criti-
cal, we can anticipate rebounds and
second waves,” he said. “The question is
do you start from a very low base, like in
Scotland, a few dozen cases, or maybe a
few hundred cases in England... then
you’re in a good position if there are
local outbreaks...
“That’s the key, using June, July and
August really cleverly, making sure we
have everything in place.”
Analysis from the London School of
Economics shows that care home resi-
dents were more likely to die of Covid-
19 in the UK than in any big European
country other than Spain. The study,
reported by The Guardian, found that in
the UK 5.3 per cent of care home resi-
dents were confirmed or suspected to
have died from Covid-19, compared
with 0.4 per cent in Germany.
Sir Mark Walport, the former chief
scientific adviser, told Sophy Ridge on
Sunday on Sky that the UK needed to
maintain “constant vigilance” as it
eased lockdown measures. There was a
“significant risk” that the virus would
return this winter, he said, as it probably
lasts longer in the air and on surfaces
when the environment is cold and wet.

of the celebrated, stylish,
and super fashionable.
Lockdown, you might
think, would not suit his
talents. And yet our key
workers are the
celebrities of these Covid-
stricken times. So perhaps
it is not surprising to find

that Rankin has taken
them as his subject.
More interesting is the
way that these sitters take
him back to his creative
roots.
Rankin, as co-founder
and publishing director of
Dazed & Confused, a

magazine that in its day
was so cool that it made
your breath condense,
earned a trend-setting
reputation for taking
often highly controversial
and frequently openly
provocative images. But
these latest pictures take

him back to the
foundations of his talent
as a portrait photographer
whose art lies as much in
his own character as in
his camera: in his ability
to make his sitter feel at
ease.
The subjects are
completely unknown to
most viewers. Their
clothes are their
uniforms; their props the
tools of their trade.
Without exotic costumes
or incredible hairstyles or
dramatic poses to play
with, Rankin returns to
basics: the ability to
capture a sense of a
personality.
The style is understated
and old-school. These
portraits are simple and
immediate. They are
possessed of a crisp clarity
that lends them a sense of
presence. But it is more
than that which catches
the viewer’s imagination.
In one sense these
pictures are all the same.
Each sitter looks into the
camera, unshrinking.
Each stares out with
unsmiling directness
straight at the viewer.
Each feels imbued with a
shared aura of confident
pride. And yet each looks
so uncompromisingly like
their own self. Rankin, in
this series, portrays our
health workers as a united
frontline army; and yet at
the same time he captures
them as unique. In doing
so he appears to be
stressing that the sorts of
faces that so often we pass
without paying much
attention to can belong to
someone special.
Ordinary people, he is
showing us, can be
superstars.

Rankin’s portraits of NHS
workers including (clockwise
from top left) Marc Lyons
Emma Kelly, Farzana
Hussain and Roopak Khara
will feature on billboards

RANKIN

A nurse who decided to isolate herself
from her two-year-old son said that she
felt like Christmas had come early
when they were reunited after nearly
three months.
Charlotte Cole, 30, was able to em-
brace George, her only child, for the
first time in 11 weeks on Friday.
She made the “agonising” decision to
move him to her parents’ home on April
1 after a Covid-19 case was confirmed at
one of the seven care homes that she
works in.
Mrs Cole, from Kirkham, Lancashire,
and her husband, Daniel, 30, a data an-
alyst, would visit but were able to see
him only through the safety of a
window.
Mrs Cole said that “my heart feels full
again” after she was reunited with
George following the easing of lock-
down restrictions.
She said: “We went to pick him up
and he came running at us. It was so
overwhelming. I’ve never seen him run
so fast and he grabbed on to us so tight-
ly. I never wanted to let him go.
“It felt amazing to hold him again and
to hear his little voice. I missed all the
little things so much, like his lovely
blond curls. There were a few water-
works... I tried to put on a brave face

but I was an emotional wreck.” Mrs
Cole said that she and her husband had
passed the time away from their son by
watching “pretty much all of Netflix”
and painting the fences and garage at
home. “I wasn’t able to concentrate at
all because he was all I was thinking
about but I bought him new toys and
presents,” she added.
Nonetheless, she said, it had been
“the right thing to do to keep George
safe and eliminate any risk”.
She said: “I know my parents are very
proud of the sacrifices Daniel and I had
to make during these 11 weeks.
“They know how we feel about not
seeing George but I’m glad he was with
them as they love him as much as any-
thing in the world.”

Greg Wilford

Nurse’s reunion with son, 2,


‘felt like an early Christmas’


Charlotte Cole was able to see her son
only through the safety of a window
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