One year on since Plymouth's first COVID-19 case
The city's Director of Public Health says we have been very 'lucky' with our case numbers
Plymouth is reflecting on the last 12 months, one year on from the first recorded COVID-19 case in the city.
The virus hit the city on March 13 2020, and since then there have been 8,846 positive tests in total.
Dr Ruth Harrell - Plymouth’s Director of Public Health - says when looking back, she does not think any of us would have predicted the year that we have had:
"It’s been confusing at times, there’s been lots of changes, and that’s genuinely been because we don’t know the answers at the time. We’ve had to change things as we’ve understood more about the disease and the way it has developed.
"If we look overall Plymouth has done very well. Our number of cases overall has been very low compared to anywhere else.
"We’ve had some incredibly sad deaths, but our death rate has been much lower than many other areas of the country."
As of yesterday (11 March), Plymouth recorded five new cases and currently has an infection rate of 33.4 per 100,000. That is well below England's average of 59.1.
Dr Harrell says the overall case figures since the start of the pandemic have been an 'achievement':
"I think COVID has been an example of where Plymouth has triumphed in adversity."
"In the work that I’ve done - I’ve worked with community and voluntary sector, with businesses, with councillors and our elected members - across the board, everybody has said 'What do you need? What do we need to do to make this happen?'
"I feel as if I’ve been able to give advice that people have then followed, which is fantastic, and I think we have seen the results of that.
"There’s only been some very isolated incidents where people haven’t followed the guidance and we have kept Plymouth safe."
Looking ahead to the future, Dr Harrell hopes the vaccination programme will reduce the amount of people being admitted into hospital with the virus:
"The vaccination programme should help us to live with to live with this as a disease where it may affect our day-to-day life a little, but nowhere near as much as it has over the last year.
"I know we are all looking forward - very appropriately - to having a much more relaxed summer. We know that the risks are much lower when people are outdoors and I hope that we’ll see something similar to last year where there will be some restrictions in place, but to a much lesser extent than before.
"The roadmap has set out a fairly optimistic view of that, but they’ve also been really clear that the data has to tell us what step we need to take and when. So there is always that caveat that we have to wait and see whether this virus has got any other nasty tricks up its sleeve.
"But we have to feel more optimistic because we’ve got the vaccination programme and we’re heading into the summer, so those things will help considerably."