Part 1 – How Ready Is Salford?
Whichever way you look at it, it's all getting a bit scary with coronavirus – confirmed cases up again today, to 456, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel revealing that up to 70% of her country could become infected. While Salford has had no cases to date, how ready is the city for a major outbreak?
Go onto Salford City Council's website and there's nothing at all about the virus, bar a direction to the Government website. There's no emergency meeting that's in the public domain, nor even a statement from City Mayor, Paul Dennett (too busy pushing his election-friendly 'A better and fairer Salford for all' strategy), nor from Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham (going on about the 'Northern Powerhouse' today).
The last statement on its website from the Salford CCG [Clinical Commissioning Group representing all doctors] was on 6th March insisting that "The NHS in Salford and Public Health England (PHE) are extremely well prepared for outbreaks of new infectious diseases. The NHS has put in place measures to ensure the safety of all patients and NHS staff while also ensuring services are available to the public as normal.
"Although there has been several confirmed cases in Greater Manchester, the risk to the general public remains low..."
The Salford NHS website, however, states that "The risk to the general public is moderate"...and then echoes the CCG statement above.
We wanted to interview someone, mainly to reassure people about the city's readiness, with localised guidance, but Salford NHS Trust declined the offer... "With your query relating to the city's readiness, you are best directing this enquiry to Salford City Council..." Except, we replied, that Salford City Council doesn't speak to the Salford Star. No response. Neither has there been any response from the Salford CCG as yet.
The Salford Star also contacted a sample of care homes in the city, asking how worried they were about the virus, what measures they had put in place to try to curb any outbreak and what restrictions, if any, they had on visitors coming into their buildings or residents going out. None responded.
Given the lack of public leadership on a local level, how worried are Salford people about the virus? The age catchment appears to be over sixty year olds, so we asked a sample of such residents, including councillors, how concerned they were.
This will be revealed in Part 2 of this article - click here
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