The Observer
8 09.01.22 NewsCoronavirus
According to the latest government
fi gures, on Friday there were 410 new
cases reported in Chelmsford and one
death. In the fi rst week of January,
there were 3,198 new cases recorded.
Following issues with certain
lagers and CO 2 during previous
phases of the pandemic, Jones said
the latest delivery issues had centred
on wine. At the same time, as Covid
cases continue to rise, he is worried
about the prospect of another lock-
down, which he does not think the
pub can survive.
“Usually at this time on a Friday
every table would be taken and I’d
have three staff working,” he said,
standing alone behind the bar, above
which a sign reads “desperate times
call for double measures”.
Customer Phil Elliott, 61, an artist,
said he had felt the impact of staff
shortages on buses, which were run-A month ago, pub landlord Scott
Jones knew only a handful of people
who had got Covid. But since then,
the majority of the people he knows
have had the virus – including his
young son, his assistant, who was off
work for 10 days, and the people he
depends on to deliver supplies to his
Chelmsford pub, the Railway Tavern.
“It was like the perfect storm, it all
happened at once,” said Jones, 40,
who was left trying to juggle it all with
his partner, on top of a 40% drop in
pub takings. “There’s so many knock-
on effects of it. Every day seems to
bring a new challenge.”
The Essex city is just one of many
places up and down the country
increasingly struggling to function
properly due to Covid staff shortages- affecting everything from bin col-
lections to the local hospital and foot-
ball team.
Buses, bins, booze ...
the city grinding to a
halt as shortages bite
Miranda
BryantChelmsford
Treat virus like the fl u,
urges ex-vaccine chief
positive Covid test to 150,057. Daily
infections fell to 146,390. NHS offi -
cials are warning that patient safety
has been compromised this win-
ter because of a crippling health and
social care staff shortage that requires
a million additional workers by the
next decade. Writing in the Observer,
Chris Hopson , c hief executive of NHS
Providers, said that the pandemic had
exposed “its weakest links”.
“There is a clear, regrettable,
impact on quality of care and, in the
most pressured parts of the system,
a worrying increase in patient safety
risk,” he writes. “It is now very clear
that the NHS and our social care sys-
tem do not have suffi cient capacity.
That asking staff to work harder and
harder to address that gap is sim-
ply not sustainable. That we need a
long-term, fully funded, workforce
plan to attract and retain the extra
one million health and care staff the
Health Foundation estimates will be
needed by 2031.”
Jeremy Hunt , the former health
secretary, also called for action: “The
pandemic has highlighted workforce
pressures but they were never new.
We can’t solve them overnight, but
we have a moral duty to NHS and care
staff to look them in the eye after the
hell of the last two years and say a
long-term plan is in place.”
Hopson said some NHS trusts out-
side London would see Covid hos-
pitalisations rise even higher than
their previous record peak last year.
“There are already a number of trusts
whose covid hospitalisation levels are
at 100% of their January 2021 peak,”
he said. “That’s before they are any-
where near their current peaks. These
organisations are likely to be 10 days
or two weeks away from their peak
this time round.”
He also said that as many as 40% of
care homes had stopped taking new
admissions in the last week, mak-
ing it hard for hospitals to discharge
patients. Stephen Chandler , presi-
dent of the Association of Directors of
Adult Social Services, said that social
care was in a “national emergency”
because so many staff were off sick.
A government spokesperson said
“historic amounts of funding” were
being provided for NHS backlogs and
social care. “Hospital admissions are
rising, however this is not yet trans-
lating into the same numbers needing
intensive care that we saw in previ-
ous waves,” they said. “We’re increas-
ing NHS capacity by building onsite
Nightingale hubs, as well as creating
2,500 virtual beds where people can
be safely treated at home.”
Dix’s remarks on ending mass-vac-
cination come as the Joint Committee
on Vaccination and Immunisation
(JCVI) ruled that fourth doses were
not currently needed because most
older people who had received boost-
ers were still well-protected against
Omicron , three months after the
booster campaign began. The UK
Health Security Agency said pro-
tection for over-65s was about 90%,
three months after a booster jab.
The JCVI’s deputy chair, Professor
Anthony Harnden , said the com-
mittee was monitoring the impact
of Omicron on older and vulnerable
people on a weekly basis.
A debate is unfolding over fourth
doses. Last week, Israel became the
fi rst country to embark on a fourth
round of Covid vaccinations , for over-
60s and healthcare workers who had
their third jab at least three months
ago. Greg Clark , the Tory chair of the
Commons science and technology
committee, said a fourth dose of vac-
cine should be considered for health-
care workers. “The UK Health Security
Agency found that the impact of a
third dose against transmission of
Covid wanes after 10 weeks,” he said.
“So, given the staff shortages in the
NHS from self-isolation and the fact
that NHS staff received their booster
from mid September, it would be
worth the JCVI considering whether
a further dose would help reduce
absences among frontline staff.”
Dix was instrumental in help-
ing pharmaceutical fi rms create the
Covid vaccines, which have trans-
formed the risk presented by the virusContinued from page 1‘It’s like the perfect
storm. There are
so many knock-on
effects and every
day seems to bring
a new challenge’
Scott Jones, pub landlord
to most people. He said he supported
the current booster campaign, but a
“new targeted strategy” was needed
to get the UK to a position of “man-
aging Covid” as an endemic virus.
“Firstly we should consider when we
stop testing and let individuals isolate
when they are not well and return to
work when they feel ready to do so.
In the same way we do in a bad infl u-
enza season,” he said.
Dix said the government should
support research and analysis of how
effective vaccines had been at produc-
ing “memory B- and T-cell immunity”- parts of the immune system that
recognise Covid – and particularly
how they worked for over-60s and
vulnerable groups. “With this data
in hand we should infl uence vaccine
manufacturers who have vaccines
that have shown the most dura-
ble cellular responses to develop an
Omicron and a Delta variant vaccine
to cover the current mutation line-
ages,” he said.
Professor Eleanor Riley , professor
of immunology and infectious dis-
ease at the University of Edinburgh,
said: “Everything depends on
whether another variant comes up.
“A fourth dose or second booster
of the existing vaccine probably isn’t
going to achieve very much. ”
Former taskforce chair
Clive Dix: ‘We now
need to manage disease,
not virus spread.’