Too soon to ease lockdown in north-east England

Local government leaders in the north-east of England have urged residents to disregard the government’s ‘reckless’ relaxation of the lockdown, amid fears that it will lead to a second spike of coronavirus in a region with the UK’s highest infection rate.

Council leaders and MPs warned that the easing of the measures, including the reopening of primary schools and allowing larger groups of people to meet in outdoor spaces, had come ‘far too soon’ in the north-east.

The north-east has the highest per-capita infection rate of any region in the UK, which has been attributed to its relatively high proportion of people with secondary illnesses linked to heavy industry, such as mining and shipbuilding. Of the 10 worst-affected local authorities, the top four are all in the north-east: Sunderland, Gateshead, South Tyneside and Middlesbrough.

Martin Gannon, the leader of Gateshead council, said: “The current approach from government is reckless and they haven’t put systems in place to keep it safe. Our advice is that people should be staying with the initial advice, which was lockdown, stay socially isolated within our homes until such time as we can have an effective testing, tracking and tracing system in place.”

Sunderland City Council leader, Graeme Miller, holds a similar view and said that the council was still urging residents to ‘stay at home’ and warned that the lockdown had been ‘forgotten’ at the weekend and that the city had been ‘full of people not socially distancing’.

In South Tyneside, only one of 54 primary schools reopened its doors to more pupils on 1 June, with the majority of the region’s local authorities having advised primary schools not to open before 8 June at the earliest.