One year on since Torbay's first COVID case
It comes as a new rapid COVID-19 Community Testing centre opens in the area
A new testing site has opened in Torbay.
Council teams have been working to set up the centre in the car park of Splashdown Quaywest water park in Goodrington.
It is part of the local authority's COVID-19 Community Testing programme to offer regular tests for asymptomatic people who are at the most risk of infection.
Community testing is for staff who have to work and cannot do so from home.
Torbay's new Director of Public Health, Dr Lincoln Sargeant, says it has been a "major undertaking to the members of staff who have worked tirelessly to get it up and running":
"Essentially, they’ve taken over part of the car park and set it up in such a way that we can facilitate people coming in once they’ve been booked: getting their test, getting their results and being able to upload those results and move on within 30 minutes and then they can get the result by text.
"So it’s designed to be as quick as possible so people can get on with their lives."
The news comes as Torbay marks its year anniversary since its first coronavirus case.
From 1 March 2020 - 7 March 2020, the area confirmed seven positive tests.
In the last 12 months there have been 4,035 cases, with 148 deaths.
Councillor Jackie Stockman - the Cabinet Member for Adults and Public Health - says "in this awful time we've learnt that collectively, we can make such a difference":
"From the good viewpoints, there’s been a huge coming together of all agencies: both our partner agencies and our voluntary sector.
"We were already working on the asset-based community development priorities in Torbay anyway, so that left our voluntary sector a good place to start.
"So in these last 12 months, there's been a continuous growing and coming together of the service provided by all agencies but in a collective manner in a different way. "
Councillor Stockman adds that people have become more caring of one another, and it "bodes good for the future":
"You can’t undervalue the role that the wider public has taken. In the majority, most people have adhered to the rules and so we’ve had less cases than we otherwise might’ve had.
"I think the most important thing for Torbay is hospitality and tourism when we start to open up there. We’ve been very good at keeping people safe down here, and we want that to continue."
Dr Sargeant echoes Councillor Stockman's words, but says "we all have to continue to play our part in order to get those numbers down":
"The vaccine is a game changer, but a vaccine on its own will not give us the complete result."
"We will still need to maintain social distancing, we will still need to wear face coverings and washing hands. When people are symptomatic they will still need to get tested, we will need to do the contact tracing and isolate positives and their contacts."
Dr Sargeant also paid tribute to those who have been working on the frontline throughout the pandemic:
"It’s been a huge undertaking over the last year and clearly we have national bodies – like NHS England and Test and Trace – but locally in the Bay I want to pay tribute not only to our healthcare workers in the NHS but to the care workers in care homes. They’ve done valiantly to help protect people.
"Our volunteers, people who have been out there helping and supporting the vulnerable people in our populations. The business and the tourism sector who have been really proactive in doing what they can to ensure their establishments are safe; and the public health workers, the people who have been busy doing the contact tracing, organising the testing facilities, the vaccination programme.
"It’s been a real concerted effort with lots of people, and I think had we not worked so effectively together, this situation would have been even more dire than it has been."
Torbay's new rapid COVID-19 Community Testing centre will offer its first round of tests from today (2 March).
Tests are by appointment only, through the Council's booking system.
Businesses being targeted first for community testing are those where employees are most at risk from infection due to the difficulty of distancing in their workplace, such as fishers, nursery workers, some factory workers and frontline staff.
The Community Testing programme uses the rapid-result Lateral Flow Devices, which are quick and easy to use and give a result in half-an-hour as opposed to being sent off to a lab.
This is the first stage of a phased programme. Following the initial pilot, later stages will expand the capacity of local testing within the Bay, including in mobile testing sites where employees can be tested at sites nearer to their locality.
These measures will be announced over the coming weeks.