'The most challenging year ever': One year on from the start of Covid in Walsall
“As a public health professional, this is something we train for but wish never happens.”
A year ago Walsall was plunged into emergency mode, along with the rest of the world, as the coronavirus pandemic took hold and turned lives upside down.
Like with many other towns and cities across Britain, the borough has been hit hard, with Walsall recording more than 800 deaths and more than 24,600 cases by March 5 this year.
Walsall’s response was spearheaded by the council, NHS and voluntary sectors, and at the forefront of the effort was Councillor Stephen Craddock, the portfolio holder for health and wellbeing, and the town’s director of public health Stephen Gunther.
For both, it was something of a baptism of fire as they were still relatively new to their current roles when the crisis began.
But one tough year on, they are now urging residents not to let up in the fight against the virus as lockdown measures are set to ease in the coming weeks.
Councillor Craddock, who had been on holiday in Vietnam and Cambodia in March 2020 before returning just before lockdown, said: “It’s been the most challenging year ever for me.
“We were both relatively new in the post. I took over on January 7 and Stephen had a huge advantage of being there a few months earlier than that.
“The word unprecedented has been largely over-used but I don’t think I’ve come across a better one to describe the year.
“There was talk that a pandemic could occur but I don’t think any of us were expecting it to have the impact that it’s had.
Mistake
“Cheltenham Festival was run on March 10, there were two Six Nations games, 10 Premier League games around that weekend and the one which was a real shocker was when Liverpool played Atletico Madrid when Spain was a centre for the virus.
“I think those big sporting events proliferated the virus hugely and with the benefit of hindsight it was a mistake.”
Mr Gunther added: “As a public health professional, this is something we train for but wish never happens.
“Fortunately, the last public health annual report gave the assurance around our health protection response, in terms of the underlying infrastructure to support any emergency.”
Like with other organisations, Walsall Council faced challenges and had to adapt to ensure support reached vulnerable residents who needed it.
Councillor Craddock said: “Within a week we were all operating virtually which is an investment in technology we made as a council the year before. I think we’ve benefited hugely from that.
“The structures in the council that were already there such as Walsall Together and our Resilient Communities model were working, so Walsall was in a position to deal with the problems we found.
“Through Making Connections, delivering food parcels, befriending calls – all of the interaction with our communities has been off the scale.
“The community associations had to close their doors to the public. But instead they’ve gone to the public. It forced them to do a 360 degree about face and look for vulnerable members of the community and bring them back in through calls and visiting.
“Whilst the council hasn’t been fully refunded, there have been a lot of grants for community associations and voluntary organisations that have helped them to keep going and find new ways of engaging with residents.
“A lot of communication that has gone on happened because of Covid and not in spite of it. That wouldn’t have happened before.”
The challenges increased earlier this year when a South African variant of the virus was discovered in part of Walsall, resulting in the need to get a total of 15,000 people surge tested within weeks.
But they said there are still huge challenges to come for the authority as they look at adapt to living with Covid for years to come.
Adapted
Mr Gunther said: “We have a whole range of services that we need to make sure are still there to support the vulnerable such as drug and alcohol, sexual health, school nursing, health visiting, wellbeing, support – a lot have adapted but we need to make sure we continue to have them.
“We need to look at the consequences still to come. Whether they be economic, social, physical, mental consequences of the pandemic. It will ripple out and trickle into many facets of people’s lives.”
“As we have further easement, the vaccination roll-out is really important. We have to consider what the messages are and encourage all the community to take the vaccination when they are offered it.”
Councillor Craddock said: “That’s probably one of our biggest challenges over the next six months.
“You’ll see the percentage of vaccination take up drop as we go down the age ranges and we need to make sure that 70-80 per cent of all of the age ranges take it up.
“We need to suppress the virus; it will help reduce the number of mutations as well because we are giving it less of an area to change and modify itself.
“But it’s about getting the message across the vaccine is safe, it is effective.
“What the vaccine means to me is all the positive things I can go out and do because I’ve had it when the restrictions have been lifted.
“The pandemic has exacerbated a lot of the inequalities that were already there and that’s one of the big challenges going forward.
Different
“We need to make sure we don’t lose sight that this is having a huge effect on people’s mental health.”
Both expect Walsall will be a different place to live, work and shop in, even as lockdown restrictions ease, for the coming years.
Councillor Craddock said: “The genie’s out the bottle a little bit in the digital world and how we communicate. We will continue to do meetings digitally.
“We’ve all been buying stuff online and that will be a habit that’s hard to break. The High Street is going to be a challenge going forward, although I think people will want to come out to start with.”
Mr Gunther added: “If I’m working full-time, I never expect to be in the office full-time ever again.
“We hope we can be more agile and family orientated in terms of support for officers, who have been working their socks off for a year.”
Despite positive news in the number of confirmed cases dropping in recent weeks, they are urging people to keep abiding by the basic rules of ‘hands, face and space’ to ensure safety.
Councillor Craddock said: “Better times are very close but it could all go wrong.”
