Stay at home, stay safe, stay cheerful: Public health boss on looking to the futre

There is no doubt it’s been a long, hard winter for everyone across the West Midlands region.

However this week we can finally start to feel cautiously optimistic about the coming months.

As the Prime Minister laid out the steps in his road map on Monday, we will all have heard it slightly differently.

For many, there would have been anticipation as they started counting the days until they could see and hold their loved ones again.

For others, who may have been juggling childcare with working from home, or just worried about the mental health of their children, there will have been relief at the news of schools re-opening.

Of course, for others again there will be anxiety, doubts and worries – whether because they work in an industry that won’t be re-opening just yet or because they fear what easing lockdown will mean for Covid-19 rates across the region and country.

All these feelings are completely natural and unsurprising, but however you feel, it is important to remember that what the Prime Minister has outlined is a careful, incremental approach to opening up different parts of society.

Rates across the country are still relatively high, and with the West Midlands currently being the region with the second highest rate of Covid-19 cases in the country – at 160 per 100,000 – there is still much work to be done here.

We know that restrictions will only be eased as rates come down, the number of people vaccinated increases, the number of new variants is low, and we are sure that the vaccines offer protection against hospitalisation and death.

It is also worth remembering how we have reached this stage. In partnership with local authority public health teams and Directors of Public Health, NHS Test and Trace are massively scaling up testing to help us all get back to some normality. Hundreds of thousands are being vaccinated every day and we cannot thank our colleagues in both public health and the NHS enough for the dedication and commitment they have shown to keeping us all safe in our communities.

It is excellent news that this week we were also able to publish our first real-world UK data showing Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine provides high levels of protection from the first dose.

Schools too have worked incredibly hard right through lockdown to make sure all students have been able to keep studying. For those who are anxious about their children returning to the classroom, PHE’s Chief Nurse and Director of Maternity and Early Years, Viv Bennett, has said that “staff, parents and pupils can feel reassured by scientific evidence that shows transmission in schools is low and that children are not drivers of infection in schools or the wider community.”

You should of course also be proud of your own efforts, because we know that lockdown has made a real difference. Transmission rates are falling significantly and this in turn is easing the pressure on the NHS.

This has only been possible thanks to the sacrifices you have made by staying at home.

But this virus is far from beaten and even as we can start to look forward to better times, we still have to keep doing the simple things that save lives.

Cover your face, wash your hands and make space will all be with us for some time.

For now, you should continue to stay at home as much as possible.

When you are offered a vaccination, take it.

Gradually we can reopen the West Midlands and the rest of the country.

But we can only do that through small, cautious steps.

We know how quickly infections and deaths can rise when we let our guards down and the future will be informed by ‘data, not dates’.

Let’s keep pulling together as a community in the West Midlands. We can then look forward to a brighter summer.

• By Katie Spence, Director of Public Health Protection for Public Health England in the West Midlands.