Pressure "ramping up" on Barnsley's NHS as Covid cases soar
The town now has one of the highest rates of the virus in England
Last updated 28th Oct 2020
Barnsley's Director of Public Health tells us pressure is "ramping up" on the town's health services from the second wave of coronavirus.
It's now the worst-affected part of South Yorkshire, with more than 500 cases per 100,000 population.
That's one of the top ten highest rates in England, above places like Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield.
Julia Burrows says she's really concerned that more and more older more vulnerable people in the town are getting the virus:
"Even though over the summer there was a lot of talk about, 'it's in the younger population, it doesn't really matter', we were really worried that at some stage when we get to a certain rate of infection it spills over into all sections of the population that are more at risk of becoming really unwell with it. And that's unfortunately has happened now.
"What we are seeing is that pressure on services starting to ramp up as we saw earlier in the year. Our health services are really well prepared - we were expecting that there'd be more pressure.
"We just really want to see people taking the precautions they need to take so that this increase that we're seeing can steady off.
"As we approach winter, we always see more people going to hospital so if we keep seeing more and more infections as a result of coronavirus that is going to put a lot more pressure on our health services."
Barnsley, along with the rest of South Yorkshire, is now under Tier Three restrictions - the highest level of rules to tackle the spread of the virus.
But there have been reports of tighter measures being considered if they don't work in slowing the spread of Covid-19.
Julia though doesn't think that will be necessary if people follow the current rules:
"If we absolutely kept to the guidance, I don't think we'd need to have any further restrictions. It really is just a matter of how much we stick to them now that will determine whether we do have to go into even more restrictive conditions.
"Anything that reduces social mixing will have an impact on the numbers. It's really hard to be absolutely precise about one thing that's going to make a difference - it's always a range of measures that will make a difference.
"But ultimately those measures need to be about reducing people mixing socially because that's where we seeing the infections passed on. So that's the thinking behind the measures."
It comes as Barnsley Hospital is urging people to only visit A&E if they really need to and if they do, to come alone.
It's already limited visiting because of a rise in coronarvirus cases there.