This week’s coronavirus column

Our Director of Adult Services, Prevention, Strategic Commissioning People, has written a column for the Lancashire Telegraph.

First of all, Covid-19 rates remain stubbornly high in Blackburn with Darwen, which is quite worrying, and daily rates of new cases is still of significant concern. Ideally we need to be south of 20 per 100,000.

Official Government figures are showing few hospital Covid deaths, however I would urge caution.

The risk is real and significant. Looking at the Blackburn with Darwen data for August the youngest Covid death in community was aged 56 and the oldest 85.

It tells us that older people and those with underlying conditions are the most vulnerable.

We also know that the highest rate of infection is amongst young people aged 18 to 30.

If anything this data combined with the community deaths information tells us that the key risk is community and intergenerational spread of the virus.

You could be asymptomatic and be taking the virus into your home and risk infecting parents or grandparents.

We want our young people to be full of life, vibrant, to have aspirations, achieve in education, to get employment, to be loved, to be healthy and safe.

Hopefully when we look back on this period of our lives it will only be a short time. Please take care and think about your actions.

The virus is a living organism, you can’t see it and the only way to stop it is to starve it from infecting new hosts. If Covid virus was visible and could be seen by the human eye then I think people would be naturally more cautious and avoid it.

If you have any signs of Covid symptoms then I would appeal to our communities to take precaution, safety first. Isolate, get tested and heed advice.

There is a great quote, “If you want to change the world, start with yourself”. To all our communities my advice is we need to accept COVID is here for a while. Yes it’s frustrating and stopping us doing the things we loved. It’s not going to be here forever. Let’s be patient and make some sensible adjustments in our lives and get through this safely together. Hopefully there will be many more years of happier times.