‘We’re very worried’: Harrogate hospitality concerned by staffing isolation

Hospitality bosses in Harrogate have said they are worried after staff are being forced to self-isolate due to rising covid cases.

Increasing covid rates in the district and across the country have seen thousands of people pinged by the NHS Test and Trace app just days before remaining lockdown measures are lifted.

Currently, the district’s seven-day covid rate stands at 416 cases per 100,000 people and infections have soared with 127 reported yesterday – the highest since January 11.

In Harrogate, hotels and restaurants have had to either close temporarily or offer a limited service as a result of staff being told to self-isolate.

Neil Mendoza, general manager at The Studley Hotel and Orchid Restaurant, told the Stray Ferret that the current situation made it “twice as hard” to operate.

He said:

“It is indeed a difficult time for our industry as with others. On top of current staffing shortage, this self-isolating and quarantining make it even twice as hard for us to operate.

“We are very worried with the current situation of cases going high and I am personally concerned that it might be a repeat of August 2020 when the government encouraged everyone to eat out.”

Mr Mendoza added that staff would continue to wear face masks and social distance in the hotel and restaurant after July 19 when restrictions are lifted.

Read more:

Across England, 520,194 alerts were sent to NHS Covid-19 app users up to July 7 telling them they had been in close contact with someone who had tested positive for coronavirus and to self-isolate.

But, the rules on 10-day self-isolation for those who have received two jabs and people aged under 18 will not end until August 16.

Meanwhile, William and Victoria Restaurant in Harrogate has had to close temporarily due to staff being told to self-isolate.

Some of our team have been instructed to self isolate after coming into contact with a positive Covid-19 case. Rather than take unnecessary risk and continue without a full operational team, we have made the decision to close for a few days.

— William & Victoria (@Will_and_Vics) July 15, 2021

In a post on its social media yesterday, the restaurant said it did not want to “take unnecessary risk and continue without a full operational team”.

Instead, it will reopen on Tuesday July 20.

Elsewhere in the town, Baltzersen’s cafe on Oxford Street posted on Facebook and Twitter that it would be operating a limited service due to staff being forced to self-isolate.

WE'RE SORRY
One of our team has had a positive lateral flow test and so much of the team need to isolate.

WE ARE STILL OPEN with limited service (Paul has dusted off his apron!) & outside only, serving from the coffee shop window.

Please bear with us – safety of all is priority pic.twitter.com/jHJnMQQkZw

— Baltzersen's (@Baltzersens) July 16, 2021

Harrogate district to get local test and trace system

The Harrogate district will be part of a local test and trace system operating in North Yorkshire from next week.

It comes amid reports the current national programme for test and trace is only managing to reach about 60% of those who have come into close contact with a positive case.

Dr Victoria Turner, a public health consultant for North Yorkshire County Council, revealed the news this morning at a briefing by North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum, which is a partnership of organisations that responds to emergencies. She said:

“This follows the national trend where most councils now are moving to a local component of contact tracing. These obviously started in the areas of greatest concern, those that were in tier three.

“From Monday we will do contact tracing. Public Health England will start to hand over cases for us to follow-up from tomorrow. It’s been quite a fast turnaround on that.”

If the national test and trace system is unable to reach someone they will hand the case to the local team.

Calls will be carried out by trained staff at North Yorkshire County Council’s headquarters in Northallerton seven days a week.

Dr Turner expects more people will engage with tracing if calls are made from a local number.

Read more:

The local call centre will also be able to signpost people to local support groups.

Richard Flinton, chief executive officer at North Yorkshire County Council, called on the community to pull together ahead of tomorrow’s lockdown:

“We have got to positively embrace the national lockdown. I do understand it will have a knock-on effect for businesses and also for people.

“That’s why we need to make sure that we look out for each other and think about those who we live near to. If we work together we can keep this lockdown limited and get to those benefits on the other side.”

Coronavirus in numbers

The briefing revealed there are currently 15 coronavirus patients at Harrogate District Hospital — down one from last week.

The full-time testing site in Harrogate is testing about 150 people a day, which is about half of its full capacity.

The Harrogate district currently has a seven-day average infection rate of 252 cases per 100,000 people — higher than the national average of 225.

Strayside Sunday: Covid testing should be devolved to local authorities

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

Life, it has been said, is just the correct apportionment of blame.

It certainly seems that way in politics and the media coverage of it. I’m as guilty as the rest, often writing negative opinion in this column and raging against the machine in conversation. Time for some perspective I feel.

Last Sunday I wrote about the dilemma faced by former Northern Ireland Secretary and Ripon MP Julian Smith in whether or not to support a new trade bill that would break international law and ignore the Northern Ireland protocol he signed when in office. When the moment of truth came Mr. Smith found enough moral fibre and courage to abstain, thereby preserving his principle, avoiding conflict with his own party leadership, safe in the knowledge that his vote would not put too much of a dent in the government’s whopping majority in parliament. He made a mature political decision to do the right thing both by the people of Northern Ireland and by the party he represents. For this he is to be applauded.

Contrast this with the position of Harrogate’s Andrew Jones MP. A remainer, Mr. Jones waved through the bill, voting with my old boss Iain Duncan Smith, Jacob Reese-Mogg, Steve Baker and the rest of the European Reform Group ultras, for a law that breaks previous agreements with the European Union and breaks international law.

There may well be good reasons for this (although preserving his odour with the Conservative Chief Whip is not one them), but, as ever, Harrogate’s MP is reticent, some might say invisible, when it comes to explaining the reasons behind his actions to the people he purports to represent. Try as they might, I understand the journalistic staff of The Stray Ferret can’t extract comment or explanation from Mr. Jones, nor his office. At worst this pattern of behaviour is undemocratic, at best it is disrespectful, regardless it is cowardly.

But governing is always difficult; it is the consideration of competing claims and countervailing arguments. Done well and, in normal times, government should arrive at negotiated settlements, grounded in their own cogent and transparent philosophy, or “political bottom” as I call it, with enough marrow to satisfy the appetites of all interested parties, voters prime amongst them.

But as we teeter on the brink of another national lockdown; likely a 2-week “circuit break,” it does begin to feel as though the government’s response to Covid is out of control, lurching from one entirely reactive policy to the next. ‘Whack-a-mole;’ knocking local outbreaks on the head, was tried and failed, bubbling was given a go and hasn’t worked, and the ‘Rule of Six’ has lasted less than two weeks. The Government is at sea, but, let’s remember, by definition there is no playbook for handling this pandemic, unprecedented in its scale and effect. This is as true in Harrogate and North Yorkshire as it is nationally.

Our “world class” Test and Trace programme is a disaster. The national testing system is the latest in a long line of national ‘top-down’ IT programmes that are not fit for purpose. Stories of people finding it difficult to book a test online are myriad, delays are common and tests have been offered that require 200-mile or more round trips. Quietly, significant rates of false positives and false negatives confuse the picture. Consequently, as Covid rates rise again, local authority leaders are holding back testing capacity to ensure tests are available for their own key workers. Cases go unchecked, frustration mounts and decisions are made in fear.

I would imagine that this fear (of a rise in Covid infection rates) is at least in part behind Harrogate council’s decision to give a week’s notice that it will not extend permission for outdoor drinking and dining to continue on Stray land outside the The Blues Bar. Hot on the heels of the mess made of the Stray by the World Cycling Championships the council worries publicly that, as Autumn sets in, slippery conditions underfoot will endanger the local public and leave it with a turf repair bill. Sod it, I say. The more than 3000 people who have signed a petition against the council’s plan seem to agree.

I understand that government has to find a way to act in our best interest while reassuring us that all will be well. But fobbing us off with jobsworth “elf and safety” justifications for actions taken to protect us from the coming second wave will not wash.

Local authority leaders are also exasperated with Westminster’s efforts to recruit a national workforce of Trace Agents. Beyond the fact that few of these people possess the established local, third sector and civil society networks which enable effective communication with local people, they also lack detailed knowledge of the key societal variables driving both Covid behavioural compliance and outbreaks; such as the nature of local housing stock, family living patterns, travel habits, culture and language. This is, in fact, what local authorities are in business to do. We need to let them get on with it.

Tracing efforts were initially outsourced to national private providers such as Serco (offering a one size fits all approach) when, instead, local authorities would much rather use their own staff, equipped both with specialist epidemiological training (asking the right questions in the right order) and a detailed understanding of their own patch. This is how it works round here and all that. Our MP’s, Messrs Adams, Jones and Smith, ought to be advocating loudly and publicly for this approach, rather than following blindly the party line that all is well in Test and Trace land. They must know that this is beyond politics; it’s a matter of life and death.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

 

 

 

Read More:

 

District MPs decline to comment on ‘broken’ covid testing system

The Harrogate district’s MPs have declined to share their views on the performance of the government’s Covid-19 testing system.

With infection rates rising across the district, there has been a rise in demand for testing. However, the Stray Ferret has been contacted by several residents this week who are concerned about the availability of testing.

Harrogate mum Madeline Smyth told us that the system is broken is “broken'” after spending two days trying to secure a test for her daughter. She finally secured an appointment – but it was in Burnley, a two-hour round trip from Harrogate.

The Stray Ferret asked our local MPs Andrew Jones, Julian Smith, and Nigel Adams – all Conservatives –  if they think the system is working well and whether it could be improved. We also asked if they have been in discussions about it with health ministers or the NHS. None of them responded to our request.

Read more:

On Wednesday, North Yorkshire County Council declared a covid “emergency” for North Yorkshire and raised concerns over testing in the county.

Dr Lincoln Sargeant, director of public health for NYCC, said testing was being hampered by “significant limitations” with laboratory capacity.

He said:

“This issue is a national one and outside of our control. We have escalated our concerns nationally and we are targeting our local testing facilities towards the communities and people in greatest need.”

In Parliament today, Conservative MP and Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg said there has been “endless carping” from people unable to book coronavirus tests. Instead, he said the number of tests being carried out should be celebrated.

Test and trace system is ‘broken’, says Harrogate mum

A Harrogate mother has said the government’s covid test and trace system is broken after she spent two days trying to book a test.

Madeline Smyth endured several fruitless hours yesterday and Monday regularly refreshing the NHS website and dialling the 119 test and trace phone line to arrange a check for her daughter Caitlin, 16, who had a persistent cough.

Ms Smyth finally secured a slot at a site in Burnley, which is a two-hour round drive from Harrogate.

She was fortunately spared the trip because the government’s mobile testing centre happened to be in Dragon Road, Harrogate, yesterday.

On her second visit to the centre, staff provided a test kit even though they said they were only supposed to help people who had managed to book online to be seen there.

Ironically the centre itself appeared quiet because, Ms Smyth suspects, people were unable to get the online booking system to work.

Ms Smyth, who has post-viral fatigue, said:

“It angers me to see people on the telly say there are plenty of tests available. There may well be but the system to access them is broken.

“We were at the Dragon Road site for 35 minutes and only saw two or three cars turn up. Seven or eight people working there were sitting around waiting for cars to turn up.

“The staff themselves were very nice and helpful and I think we only got a test because the poor girl we spoke to took pity on me because she could see I wasn’t fit to drive to Burnley and my daughter was showing covid symptoms.”

Caitlin, who attends Rossett School in Harrogate, and her brother Oliver, 12, are isolating at home pending the test result.

Read more:

Ms Smyth suspects her post-viral fatigue is a legacy of covid contracted last winter, which contributed to her relinquishing her role as a teacher at Nidderdale High School. She added:

“I was lucky because I am not working now so I was able to spend two days searching for a test. It was exhausting and stressful but there must be hundreds of working mums in the area with kids that have covid symptoms who don’t have the time to go through this.”

Ms Smyth said schools should be issued with test kits that can be given to children as soon as they develop symptoms.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said:

“NHS test and trace is working, we are processing a million tests a week but we are seeing significant demand for tests, including from people who do not have symptoms and are not otherwise eligible.

“Anyone with an appointment will not be turned away, new booking slots and home testing kits are made available daily for those who need them and we are targeting testing capacity at the areas that need it most, including those where there is an outbreak, and prioritising at-risk groups.

“We recently announced new facilities and technology to process results even faster. If you do not have symptoms and are not eligible to get a test you should not be coming forward for one.”

Strayside Sunday: If our government feels able to break the law then why shouldn’t we? 

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

Lament; a noun. As in “a week-long lament for the rule of law and Britain’s standing in the world”.

To lament; a verb. As in “I lament the end of a credible Conservative Government”.

Either way, it’s a sad tale and a sorry state of affairs.

Having focused my attention on the small “p” politics and goings on in Harrogate and surrounds for the past 16 weeks I find I need a refresher, to avert my gaze and take in vistas new.  It’s not so much that I’m tired, or that I think that the performance of Harrogate Borough Council is not worthy of attention.  Quite the reverse.  The great American Speaker of the House of Representatives Thomas “Tip” O’Neill had it almost right when he said that “all politics is local” (when in fact it may be that ‘all that’s local is politics’).  No, it’s rather that, in respect of the council, I find myself in the first stage of grief; one of shock and denial, in which I inhabit a state of disbelief and numbed feelings.  I need to look away for a moment and think of something else, to find some hope.

So to Westminster, to the excitement and derring do of the national scene and to the swashbuckling antics of Enid Blyton character and Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.  The mop haired titan must be feeling the pressure.  On two fronts, the ongoing Covid-19 crisis and the haunting return of Brexit.

Coronavirus rates of infection are climbing alarmingly again in many of our towns and cities.  Published by Public Health England, the Joint Biosecurity Centre and NHS Test and Trace, the government watchlist, in which places are categorised as places of ‘concern’ (green) as warranting ‘enhanced support’ (amber) or as requiring ‘intervention’ (red), is beginning to resemble New York’s 5th Avenue when the traffic lights turn and stop all north/south traffic.  The trend is not good.

In an attempt to avoid a second national lockdown and never one to let a good slogan go to waste, on September 9, the PM announced “The Rule of Six,” which means that, from tomorrow, no more than 6 Englishmen and Women can gather, indoors or out.  If we do we will be breaking the law.  But, I hear you cry, it would only be in, as Brandon Lewis MP said, a “very specific and limited way.”  Hang on.  Wait a minute. My apologies, I got my wires crossed there for a moment.  When the Northern Ireland Secretary said that he was actually talking about the fact that Britain looks like it is going to break international law by putting a bill to Parliament overriding elements of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement.  Including parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol negotiated and signed during Ripon’s own MP Julian Smith’s tenure as predecessor to Brandon Lewis.

I’m of the opinion that the Conservative Party is the party of freedom.  Guardians of a rule of law based on the notion of individual sovereignty and responsibility.  Boris Johnson, if he believes anything, is a libertarian who thinks we should all be left alone to control our own lives, in so far as moral conduct and the law allows.  So it’s a world turned upside down in which this Prime Minister inflicts upon us restrictions on our movements and associations unprecedented in peacetime.  Rather than appealing to our moral code, appealing to our better angels if you will, the government is instead imposing a new penal code.  Clearly our government doesn’t trust us to behave properly and wants us punished when we don’t.

I’m also of the opinion that the Conservative Party is the party of law and order.  Which is to say that rules and their observance matter if we are to maintain a functioning and civilised society.  But Britain’s leaders govern by consent, within a legal framework. We have to trust our leaders to do the right thing, by us.  And our leaders have to work to maintain our trust if they are to have our consent to govern.  Yet the Rule of Six has a disquietingly fascistic sense to it, if not a black-shirt vibe then certainly brown.  Governing by consent this is not.

And breaking international law when it becomes inconvenient cannot be right.  The law is not an a la carte menu available only to the few, it’s a prix fixe with set options, for the mass market.  If our government feels able to break the law when it chooses then why shouldn’t we?  With our international reputation already tarnished badly by our Brexit shenanigans to date, redacting unilaterally the bits of the (already signed) Withdrawal Agreement is dishonourable and edges toward tin pot.  The government has lost credibility.  The EU says told you so.

Finally, all of this has wound up a bizarre coalition of Tory Big Beasts.  Thatcherite, Brexiteer Lords Howard and Lamont are joined, in their spluttering outrage at the latest turn of events and the actions of their own party’s government, by One Nation, Remainer Lords Heseltine and Gummer, as well of course as by Sir John Major.  I share their view.  So should every Conservative.  So should everyone.  If we don’t we are all diminished.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

Read More: 

 

County council’s new covid plan includes antibody tests and daily calls to care homes

North Yorkshire County Council has published its coronavirus outbreak plan which includes the roll out of antibody tests and daily calls to care homes.

The plan recognises the higher than average elderly population in Harrogate, at 23.1%, by including plans to work with care homes. Plans to ensure quick, localised responses to a suspected outbreak are in place. Each care home will also receive daily calls from a contact worker and allocated its own liason officer.

The plan details how testing will be developed locally – mobile testing units will continue to be distributed and antibody testing will be rolled out.

For complex cases that cannot be followed up over the phone or via the test and trace app a tailored approach will be taken by a core team to provide the necessary support.

Research into specific areas with high rates of transmission has also been taken to ensure support is targeted correctly. Key agencies and organisations will work alongside the county council to ensure those in a vulnerable or high risk category are looked after.

The NHS test and trace system will continue to be used, but strategies will now be focused at a local level.

Read more: 

The plan also details a number of groups which will be set up to work at local and regional levels to develop outbreak plans as lockdown eases and provide public-facing communication.

Alongside these initiatives, those introduced at the beginning of the outbreak will continue. For example, social distancing and thorough hand washing will continue to be encouraged.

 

Warnings over test and trace scammers in Yorkshire

There have been reports of scammers claiming to be from the NHS Test and Trace scheme. The North Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is advising patients to be aware and seek the correct guidance.

The NHS Test and Trace scheme aims to limit the spread of coronavirus by encouraging patients with positive test results to share the details about the people they have recently been in contact with.

Yorkshire CCG has advised the public that any telephone call or text will come from a verified NHS number and it will provide you with a unique ID number. If you receive a text message, the CCG is advising to not click on any links within the text but instead go direct to the Test and Trace website.

Dr Charles Parker, Clinical Chair of NHS North Yorkshire CCG, said:

“People will usually be contacted within 72 hours after a test with the result. If you have not taken a test in the last 72 hours then the call or text will not be genuine. Please also be reassured that a genuine contact tracer will not ask you to provide any passwords, bank account details or pin numbers.

“Please do not let this stop you from taking a test, it is important that we do as much as we can to halt the spread of the virus and then we can start returning to a normal life.”

A draft petition put forward by a Harrogate councillor calling for widespread coronavirus testing was rejected by the UK government

The NHS Test and Trace scheme aims to protect the public, but caution must be taken to prevent scamming.

Read more:

NHS North Yorkshire CCG Lay Member for Patient and Public Involvement, Kate Kennady, said:

“The NHS Test and Trace scheme is an important part of the country’s strategy to suppress Covid-19 so we can move towards normality as soon as possible. It is important that people engage with the service because the better the uptake the more successful it will be. However there are some things to look out for to protect yourself from fraud.”

The Yorkshire CCG has warned the public to be aware and seek further guidance if they are concerned about a contact.