Discussions at East Devon District Council were still being held, while meetings in the South Hams and West Devon were as of Monday still set to continue.

Other councils have begun to cancel meetings. 

Daniel Clark  www.devonlive.com

Council across Devon have begun cancelling meetings following latest Government advice asking people to stop non-essential contact with other people and avoid all unnecessary travel.

Torridge District Council on Tuesday morning announced that they have taken the decision to cancel all public committee and other meetings until at least the end of March, while at a Teignbridge District Council meeting, it was announced it would be the last until further notice.

Current legislation means that councils cannot meet virtually as members have to be present in the room in order to vote on any decision, but Local Government Secretary Robert Jenrick has announced the Government will consider bringing forward legislation to legislation to allow council committee meetings to be held virtually for a temporary period

Councils will be able to use their discretion on deadlines for Freedom of Information requests, the deadline for local government financial audits will be extended to September 30, and it will consider bringing forward legislation to remove the requirement for annual council meetings to take place in person.

Members of the public are being advised not to attend council offices unless absolutely necessary and even them, they are being urged to speak to them in advance of setting off.

Cllr Ken James, Leader of Torridge District Council said: “The message remains that people should in the first instance follow all the guidance being given by the NHS and Central Government and supplement this with any local service updates issued by the Council. I know that all of our officers will do their best to ensure that the upheaval likely to be caused by the spread of COVID-19 will be minimised as far as possible and we will be monitoring and adjusting as times goes on. Our aim is to continue to serve our residents and businesses to the best of our abilities as the situation allows.”

Steve Hearse – Strategic Manager Resources, added: “The public will be able to help us to reduce the spread of the virus and free up officer time by interacting with the Council online or by telephone wherever this is possible. During the current crisis we would ask that they only visit offices where this is absolutely necessary and agreed in advance by telephone. If a request is not urgent then we would also appreciate people deferring a request until a time when the current peak levels of crisis has subsided.”

Announcing the suspension of meetings, a spokesman added: “Following recent government and NHS announcements concerning the spread of Coronavirus the government has asked everybody in the UK to stop non-essential contact with other people and avoid all unnecessary travel. This has been referred to as “social distancing”.

“As a result of this advice the Council have taken the decision to cancel all public committee and other meetings until at least the end of March. The Council will continue to review government advice on a weekly basis and update its approach as appropriate. Where possible alternative methods of exchanging information such as video conferencing will be put in place so that the business of making decisions can continue.

“The Council are also asking members of the public to think about how they interact with the Council in the short term. Many services can be accessed online or requests made by telephone. The Council are advising people that its customer reception points will be closed for all but emergency or essential contact. We are therefore asking people not to visit Council Offices unless it is absolutely necessary and would urge people to speak to officers first before setting off with the intention to visit.

“Officers and Members have also held meetings to discuss service provision during the likely ongoing escalation of the crisis. The emphasis has been on being able to continue to provide the most important front line services to the many vulnerable people across the district as well as other important services such as refuse collection, which nearly everyone uses.

“Human resource teams have also been trying to understand going forward the impact that potential school closures might have on staff that have parenting duties or other staff who might be more vulnerable due to their own health or the health of relatives or dependant partners.

“While services are currently operating at near normal capacity as more officers may themselves succumb to the virus, or be responsible for looking after others at home, some Council response times may be extended. The Council will do its best to manage resources in key services by redeploying staff or assessing temporary workforce arrangements but would ask the public for their understanding in what continues to be a fast evolving situation. There may also be a need to prioritise some services over others but we will endeavour to keep all services running as smoothly as possible.”

At Tuesday morning’s Teignbridge meeting, Phil Shears, the council’s managing director, said that following the meeting, the council was cancelling all non-essential meetings until further notice, which would include council, executive and committee meetings. The full council continued as scheduled as they needed to make a decision on funding for a link road in Newton Abbot by the end of the month and not doing so would set the project back by five years.

Mr Shears added: “We will carry on providing services to residents and for those most in need.”

He said that they were waiting updated guidance from Robert Jenrick about the relaxation of rules than mean meetings cannot be held virtually as members have to be present in the room to vote on all decisions.

Cllr Richard Keeling, chairman of the council, added that he was asking all councillors and members of the public not to visit the council offices until absolutely necessary.

However, not all councils have yet chosen to suspend all meetings.

A North Devon Council spokesman said that the Policy Development Committee meeting scheduled for Thursday was still set to take place, but they were establishing if enough members would be attending to ensure the meeting could legally take place.

They added: “We suspect that the majority won’t attend so there wouldn’t be a quorum.  If we ascertain that there is no quorum, the meeting will be cancelled. We are awaiting advice from Government regarding our other meetings, which we hope to receive in the next day.”

A Mid Devon District Council spokesman added: “We have no plans to the scheduling of our Council meetings at this point in time, but we are keeping this under review.”

Discussions at East Devon District Council were still being held, while meetings in the South Hams and West Devon were as of Monday still set to continue.

Cllr Judy Pearce, Leader of South Hams District Council, said: “At the moment we are following Government guidance. However, we are looking at ways of minimising the risks by live streaming as many public meetings as possible, so the public can still watch the meetings remotely. The situation is evolving on a daily basis and we will publish any changes to our meeting schedule on our website and on social media.”

Cllr Neil Jory, Leader of West Devon Borough Council, said: “We are working hard to make sure that business at the council is affected as little as possible. We are asking staff, Councillors and officers showing symptoms to self-isolate and not attend meetings, in line with Government guidance. Thanks to our remote working capabilities, staff and Councillors can attend internal meetings via skype from home if they need to. We are reviewing how we conduct our Council and other Committee meetings to minimise the risks, and will notify the public of any changes to our usual meeting arrangements via our website and social media”

In response to Owl’s post Liz Pole, media officer for Devon Labour, has sent in the following information on support groups etc.

national coordinating website : https://covidmutualaid.org/

There is a Devon-wide Covid Mutual Aid group on Facebook and they have a very active Slack group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/devonmag/

Survey

https://docs.google.com/…/1FAIpQLSf4iUCfpoK…/viewform…

Minutes

https://docs.google.com/…/1oWWd8An3yxks5EWfNxtE…/edit…

SHORT NOTICE: Meeting calls this evening:

[1] Safeguarding Training for Mutual Aid Networks hosted by the National Food Service 18:30 to 20:30 Link: https://zoom.us/j/801023850

Momentum discussion

[2] Coronavirus: How should the left respond? Hosted by The World Transformed from 20:00 Link: https://t.co/dGK3WwK007?amp=1

new group for East Devon https://www.facebook.com/groups/1313793688819070/

Several constituency Labour Parties in Devon are offering phone / email contact details for a team available to help those in self-isolation or vulnerable. In Tiverton and Honiton we are building up a spatial network of members identifying as available to help, and working on emergency coordinating teams via our town councillors.  

Sidmouth business leaders are to raise their concerns about the economic effect of the coronavirus with the East Devon MP, Simon Jupp.

Philippa Davies  www.sidmouthherald.co.uk 

The Sidmouth Chamber of Commerce has also contacted the leaders of the town and district councils, calling for ‘specific measures to address the problems that local businesses face’.

It follows the Government’s advice on ‘social distancing’, which urges people to avoid pubs, clubs, cinemas, theatres and restaurants, along with all unnecessary travel, to curb the spread of the virus.

The Chamber fully supports these precautions, but also wants to be reassured that steps will be taken to help businesses that face major losses as a result of the restrictions.

A spokesman for the Chamber said: “The Chamber is obviously concerned for our business community, and there is no doubt that this will be an extremely challenging period for us all.

“We are particularly exposed to the economic situation, because Sidmouth is reliant upon tourism and our clientele is typically elderly.

“For our hotels and accommodation providers, the impact will be very severe indeed.

“This will also extend to our pubs, clubs, cafes and restaurants, which form such an important component of our local economy.

“The overwhelming need is for everyone to stay safe and accede to government guidance and advice.

“Sidmouth has an elderly and therefore vulnerable population, so we as a community have to get together and do whatever we can to help our neighbours and provide assistance where required.

“Sidmouth has a sense of community and resilience that will stand us in good stead during these very difficult and troubling times.

“The Chamber has been in contact with Simon Jupp, our MP, to discuss the situation, and with the leaders of the town and district councils.

“We are urging specific measures to address the problems that local businesses face.

“This is a time for our local authorities to show a proactive, sympathetic and flexible approach towards the business community.

“We are monitoring the crisis closely, and especially the impact upon our local economy.

“In particular, we need to formulate plans for ensuring a speedy recovery once the virus is defeated.”

In these tumultuous times Owl is considering how to be most useful, there is unlikely to be much local news for a while. Perhaps by becoming a hub for locals to share their community-building or other experiences and information?. For example by giving links to tutorials on Skype and/or Zoom or Facebook Portal; Ideas for things to do in isolation etc. Open to ideas.

Meanwhile, Owl will continue with highly selective Covid related posts. This one might be helpful.

What we scientists have discovered about how each age group spreads Covid-19 

Petra Klepac  www.theguardian.com

[Dr Petra Klepac is assistant professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine]

Early detection and early response. In an ideal world, this will contain an outbreak of infectious disease and prevent it from establishing in a population and becoming an epidemic.

Containment typically involves isolating and testing suspected cases, tracing their contacts, and quarantine in case any of these people are infected. The more thorough the testing and contact tracing early on, the better the chance of containment. These measures work well, especially for diseases like Sars, where symptoms coincide with infectiousness – it is easy to recognise people who are infected.

In the case of Covid-19, detection is much harder because some transmission is possible before people show obvious symptoms, in this case a fever and cough. If there are no symptoms, it is impossible to identify people who are infected unless they are tested and their infection is confirmed in a laboratory, which is why airport screening at arrival is not very effective for Covid-19. This makes the virus much harder to control. Sooner or later, an infected case escapes detection and starts a chain of transmission, and quickly leads to a growing number of cases, which can become impossible to contain. As a result, containment has failed in a number of countries and the World Health Organization has declared a pandemic that is here to stay for months, if not longer.

So how does an epidemic spread through a population – and how do we control it? In outbreak analysis, we measure transmission using the reproduction number (otherwise known as R), which tells us how many other people a typical Covid-19 case will infect on average. If one person is expected to infect more than one other person, the infection will grow and create an outbreak; if a person infects less than one other, the infection will peter out.

The larger the value of R, the easier the virus spreads through a population and the higher the number of infections. For seasonal flu, one infection leads on average to 1.4 new infections. For Covid-19, one infection leads to 2-3 others in the early stages of an outbreak. How many other people we end up infecting depends on several things: how many susceptible people there are in the population, how long we are infected for (the longer we are infected the more chances there are to pass on the infection), the number of people we come into contact with, and the probability of passing on the infection to those contacts.

In order to control the epidemic, we need to reduce R below 1. For diseases such as measles, we can achieve this by vaccinating a large enough proportion of the population so that the disease can no longer spread. Exactly what proportion we need to vaccinate to reach community immunity depends again on R. For R of 2, we need to immunise half of the population to interrupt transmission; for R of 3 we need to immunise two thirds of the population to get R below 1.

However, an effective vaccine for Covid-19 is unlikely to be available for another 12-18 months at best.

Shortening the duration of infection could also reduce transmission, and for some infections, such as influenza, this can be achieved with antiviral therapy. There are currently more than a hundred clinical studies in progress, which could produce therapies that reduce the duration of infection or infectivity. However, both of these control options are not yet available.

Another option to reduce the duration of infection is continued testing; this is a measure that can be effective throughout the epidemic. Finding infected people and advising them to self-isolate for the duration of the infection minimises the risk of them passing on the infection, which therefore slows down the spread. This is again a basic intervention method that we know works well, but in order for it to be most effective, results need to be processed quickly (in the UK it takes 2-4 days to get the results, in Wuhan it is under 4 hours).

If we can’t easily reduce susceptibility or duration, we are left with two things: the probability of transmitting the infection upon contact and the number of different people we come into contact with. Both of these are things we as individuals can change by modifying our behaviour. Washing hands frequently for 20 seconds with hot water and soap, not touching our faces, covering our coughs and sneezes, staying at home if we are sick – all of these reduce the risk of getting infected or passing on the infection to someone else.

Cancelling large gatherings, working from home and school closures are all social distancing measures aimed at reducing the number of contacts between people, each of which is an opportunity for passing on an infection. But this will not be a simple case of just cancelling events and closing schools for a couple of weeks. More severe measures will be necessary to bring the infections to low enough levels to keep the pressure off the health-system long-term. As individuals, we must all reduce the number of different people we come into contact with on a daily basis, and be prepared to do so for a prolonged period of time.

But what sorts of contacts are most important for transmission? Together with Adam Kucharski, also from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, I have recently collaborated with the BBC on a massive citizen science project, led by Professor Julia Gog from Cambridge University. Called BBC Pandemic, the project collected information on how people of different ages interact with one another in different contexts (home, work, school, other) from over 35,000 volunteers. We have recently been fast-tracking the release of contact data to help inform UK Covid-19 modelling efforts and potential intervention strategies.

What we have found in this data is that adults aged 20-50 make most of their contacts in workplaces. If those of us who can work remotely start doing so now, it will contribute to lowering overall transmission in the population. Another important finding is that people over 65 – who are particularly at risk from severe Covid-19 illness – make over half of their contacts in other settings (not home, school or work), such as shops, restaurants and leisure centres. By avoiding these interactions, people who are most at risk from the new coronavirus could halve their risk of infection. By changing our behaviour now, and sustaining these changes throughout the outbreak, we can significantly reduce our own risk of infection, and the risk to others, and by doing so help protect those most vulnerable.

Sustainability is key here; these measures may reduce the reproduction number R, but as soon as they are lifted we could see transmission again, and another outbreak.

We must all take individual action to reduce Covid-19 transmission and slow down its spread, limit the number of infections and reduce the pressure on the health system so that everyone who needs medical care can get it. Starting now, and for the duration of this epidemic, we all have a role to play and a responsibility to modify our behaviour in order to protect the ones who are most at risk.

Last Friday (March 13) five County Councillors wrote to all Devon MP’s urging the Government to bring forward social distancing measures to reduce the impact of the Coronavirus.

They were gravely concerned that the people of Devon are being excessively exposed to the threat of death through the coronavirus, because the Government was failing to introduce the social distancing measures needed to contain the epidemic.

The UK has fewer hospital beds, fewer Intensive Care Unit beds and fewer specialist respiratory beds than other European countries. In Devon we have more than our fair share of the elderly population who will be especially vulnerable to the epidemic.

They are all members of the Health and Adult Care Scrutiny Committee, but their statement was issued in their personal capacities. They were:

Hilary Ackland (Exeter, Pinhoe and Mincinglake)
Marina Asvachin (Exeter, Wonford and St. Loyes)
Martin Shaw (Seaton and Colyton)
Nick Way (Crediton)
Claire Wright (Otter Valley)

Within the space of three days their intervention now looks prophetic as the Government, yesterday, changed course in the face of evidence emerging from Italy, effectively adopting this amongst other measures.

These five were doing their job, scrutinising Health and Well Being policies as they affect our lives locally on our behalves. Until now the Government has been following a strategy at odds with WHO advice and markedly different from the rest of the world. This has now changed as that strategy has been subject to expert scrutiny and in the face of reality.

Proper and fearless scrutiny is an entirely constructive process.

Although this group stressed they were acting in a personal capacity, Owl notices that not one of the majority Conservative members of the committee joined them.

Over 400 volunteer groups offering support to neighbours affected by coronavirus measures have been set up, using social media to co-ordinate activity. 

Owl has looked at the map and finds that they look to be dominated by facebook based organisations. So the only East Devon group showing is Exmouth. The Otterton and Ottery St Mary groups Owl has posted don’t feature.  Social media might not be the best way of communicating with the vulnerable over seventies.

www.civilsociety.co.uk 

A central body named Covid-19 Mutual Aid UK will focus on providing resources and connecting people to their nearest local groups, willing volunteers and those in need.

The group is run entirely by volunteers and not medical professionals. There are now more than 400 local groups across the country.