Many of us will have either had or heard conversations about how we all need to ‘learn to live’ with Covid. Director of Public Health, Matt Ashton explains why this is an overly simplified view.
“As I write, our community infection rates are coming down – they’re around a quarter of what they were in early January. They are however, still double what they were with Delta in the autumn – and those rates were very high.
Thankfully, the conversion to serious illness and death is much lower than we’ve previously seen. You may have heard that Omicron is milder – but there’s no evidence that’s the case. The reduction is mostly due to the impact of the vaccination programme, which significantly reduces the likelihood of serious illness or death as a result of Covid infection.
Covid still has the potential to cause significant disruption to us all – individually and collectively. Through sickness absence, through impact on services, disruption to education, through impact on the wider economy.
I do think that people sometimes assume that public health is all about stopping people living their lives. The reality is that we all have the same goal – to minimise harm and disruption and ALLOW everyone to live their lives more freely – in good health, including people more clinically vulnerable to serious illness.
No-one wants to see a return of lockdowns and exhausting restrictions – so how can we as a society protect each other – and through proactive action – prevent the need for harsh restrictions which have far-reaching negative consequences including on children’s education and wellbeing, our mental health and the economy.
The starting point for me remains vaccination – it’s free, safe and extremely effective.
We know there are many reasons why people have chosen not to get their vaccine, but we will continue to work closely with our communities to make sure that the offer is right, and that the reasons and rationale for the vaccination programme is understood – including the risks of not being vaccinated and a co-ordinated approach to tackling false information.
This is about hearts and minds, and honest communication – it is not and should never be about mandating. Vaccination is the right thing to do, and we have to help people to make that decision for themselves – not just tell them what the answer is.
Data and intelligence systems need to remain active, with good quality surveillance and monitoring which will allow us to quickly identify increases in infection levels, and new variants of concern. This in turn should help us put measures in place quickly and proactively, and hopefully avoid the need for harsher measures further down the line.
We need to have a level of flex in our use of protective measures such as face coverings and testing – use them whilst rates of infection are still high – but have the ability to quickly step down (and back up) when levels of infection change.
Alongside this, if people are required to self-isolate, we have to make it easier for people to do so, without financial disadvantage.
Research and development remain essential, both for Covid-19 and any future pandemics. We have a fantastic opportunity with the development of the Pandemic Institute in the city, as we look to predict, prevent, prepare, respond and recover from future pandemics.
We also need a coordinated global response to pandemics – including global vaccine roll-out, as whilst vaccine inequity remains, there is an uncontrolled risk of new variants emerging, which may threaten all of us.
There may be some really innovative ways of disrupting virus spread that need to be considered. Many of us have had to adapt in the last two years to agile working, to video calls and working out of the back bedroom.
For some people this will continue, for others it won’t. We have also seen considerable pressure on schools and education, so perhaps consideration needs to be given at a national level to what school holidays should look like, so we can build in slightly longer firebreaks throughout the year.
The need for high quality communications and engagement won’t go away – and thankfully I think Liverpool has done well over the last two years, however, it is essential we carry on listening and learning and adapting our approaches, making sure our messages are as clear and well received as possible.
Inequalities have been front and centre of the pandemic and people from the most deprived communities and with the poorest health and wellbeing, have suffered the most from Covid-19.
We simply have to get serious about systematically addressing these underlying inequalities that burden our communities. These inequalities exist more in the north of the country than in the south and more on Merseyside than in most other areas.
An evidence-based levelling up agenda that systematically addresses and improves these issues in areas like Liverpool, would put us in a much stronger position to deal with pandemics of the future.
There needs to be ongoing investment in public health skills and capacity – I know people think I would say this anyway – but public health teams (working with partners) up and down the country have been phenomenal in their response to the pandemic – in extremely challenging circumstances.
The dedication and commitment in their response has been incredible to see, but teams are exhausted, capacity is over-stretched and there are plenty of other public health challenges like healthy weight, smoking cessation, mental wellbeing, sexual health, addictions and increasing MMR vaccination that still need work.
At the moment, my glass is definitely more half-full rather than half-empty. It has been a very challenging two years for everyone, all our lives have been disrupted and many people have been very badly affected by this devastating virus – but if we properly capture the learning and apply it to how we live our lives, then I truly believe we can start to live safely and fairly with Covid.“
