Covid rates in Devon and Cornwall have dropped by a third in the last week and are no longer the highest in England.

Owl notes the increasing part being played by the local public health teams, who were by-passed in the early stages of the pandemic.

Daniel Clark www.devonlive.com

A total of 6695 new cases were confirmed across the two counties – with the total since the start of the pandemic at 119433 – down by 33 per cent from last week’s total.

And while rates remain relatively high, they are no longer at the top of the charts in England, as last week 11 of the top 13 areas were in Devon and Cornwall, but that is no longer the case.

Plymouth has the 5 ^th highest rate in England, with Cornwall 6 ^th , the only two areas in the top ten. Torbay is 11 ^th , with South Hams 13 ^th , and Teignbridge in 17 ^th the only other areas in the top 20.

Rates have fallen everywhere though, as have the number of new cases recorded, in all of the areas of the two counties.

Government stats show that 6695 new cases have been confirmed across the region in the past seven days, to 9685 new cases confirmed last week.

Since August 28, of the 6695 new cases confirmed, 2366 were in Cornwall, 516 in East Devon, 419 in Exeter, 320 in Mid Devon, 342 in North Devon, 1063 in Plymouth, 344 in South Hams, 435 in Teignbridge, 494 in Torbay, 211 in Torridge and 185 in West Devon.

This compares to the 9685 cases confirmed between August 21 and 27, of which, 3781 were in Cornwall, with 715 in East Devon, 662 in Exeter, 428 in Mid Devon, 448 in North Devon, 1229 in Plymouth, 375 in South Hams, 748 in Teignbridge, 679 in Torbay, 335 in Torridge and 285 in West Devon.

The fall comes despite Plymouth, Torbay, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly being elevated to ‘Enhanced Response Area’ status, because case rates in the county were among the highest in England – and the fall in cases and infection rates almost certainly relates to infections caught before the introduced of the status last Friday as they have yet to have time to take any effect.

While no extra restrictions are in place, measures have been rolled out which will help with support measures for education settings and increased national communications support, clearly outlining the continued risks of Covid-19 and the need to take personal action, such as the wearing of face masks and social distancing.

Infection rates across Devon are currently highest in the 0-19s, then the 20-39s, and then by the 40-59s, 60-79s and 80+. But in Torbay and Cornwall, the 20-39s have the highest rates, as does Torridge, West Devon and East Devon at a district level, while in Exeter, the 40-59s have the highest rates.

The latest Government figures, which give the position as of Tuesday, August 31, show that across hospital trusts in the two counties, there has continued to be a rise in the number in hospital – reflecting the rise in cases from previous weeks – going from 152 to 179.

Numbers in Cornwall have gone from 24 to 39, at Derriford Hospital they have risen from 52 to 54, at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, numbers are up from 40 to 51, and in North Devon District Hospital, they have stayed level at 19. But in Torbay, the numbers at Torbay Hospital have fallen from 19 to 16.

The figures show how many patients are in hospital following a positive test for Covid-19, but not whether they were admitted for Covid-related reasons, whether they were infected inside the hospital, or whether their admission was entirely unrelated but they happened to have Covid at the same time – figures for the South West show on August 24, around 17 per cent of beds were occupied by patients ‘with Covid’ and 83 per cent ‘for Covid’.

In the last week, there has been 16 deaths in Devon, two in Cornwall, eight in Plymouth, but just one in Torbay.

In terms of the latest MSOA cluster maps, that cover the period of specimen dates between August 23-29, all 230 areas of Devon and Cornwall reported three or more cases, including the Isles of Scilly with 10, one of four areas alongside St Just & Land’s End, Bow, Lapford & Yeoford and Sidmouth Town recording ten or less.

Newquay East reported 115 cases – half the 228 for the previous seven days, and was the only area above 100, compared to five for the previous week.

St Columb Minor & Porth reported 83, with Ivybridge (77), Cranbrook, Broadclyst & Stoke Canon (75), St Austell Central (72), Chelston, Cockington & Livermead (68) and Ham, Beacon Park & Pennycross (67) the only areas above 67.

Highest areas for each of the other districts were Middlemoor & Sowton (53), Tiverton West (42), Barnstaple South (40), Teignmouth North (52), Bideford South & East (65) and Tavistock (59)

In terms of infection rates, the four worst areas in England are all in Cornwall, with Newquay East, followed by St Columb Minor & Porth, Mid Saltash and Grampound Road, St Newlyn East and Cubert, with Padstow & St Issey 12 ^th , they are only areas in the top 20 – when last week, there were 17 areas in Devon and Cornwall. Ham, Beacon Park & Pennycross is 23 ^rd , while Devon’s top area is Tiverton West in 54 ^th .

Of the population aged 16 and up, 85.9% in Cornwall, 89.8% in East Devon, 78.7% in Exeter, 88.5% in Mid Devon, 87.2% in North Devon, 83.3% in Plymouth, 87.6% in South Hams, 88.8% in Teignbridge, 85.2% in Torbay, 88.4% in Torridge, and 89.9% in West Devon, have had one dose.

And of the population aged 16 and up, 78.8% in Cornwall, 82.8% in East Devon, 69.2% in Exeter, 81.1% in Mid Devon, 80.1% in North Devon, 73.9% in Plymouth, 79.9% in South Hams, 81.8% in Teignbridge, 77.4% in Torbay, 80.9% in Torridge and 82.6% in West Devon, have had a second dose.

Steve Brown, Director of Public Health Devon, said; “We’re going to see better use of our community testing vans. We’ve got five testing vans, which go out across Devon. Two of those vans already have embedded vaccination teams, so they’re going out to areas where there’s low uptake of vaccine and encouraging particularly young people and people who probably wouldn’t ordinarily go to our fixed vaccination sites to come forward to get vaccinated.

“We’re going to be looking at testing as well to make sure that there is testing capability across the whole of Devon, so people can access testing swiftly and easily.

“We’re also going to see an increase in our public health campaigns, to encourage people to get tested if they have symptoms, and obviously to take up the vaccination programme.”

Coronavirus cases have fallen a little in the latest recorded week, Mr Brown added: “We’ve all got a vital role to play. Please, if you’re eligible to be vaccinated, get your vaccination.

“If you have symptoms of COVID-19 – high temperature, loss of sense of smell or taste, or persistent cough – please isolate and then book yourself a PCR test.

“I’d also encourage people to test regularly using lateral flow tests, particularly when going out to visit vulnerable people; or you’re going to an event maybe; or you’ve come back from an event. These would be ideal times to take a lateral flow test.

“And also please don’t forget the good, old-fashioned public health measures – washing your hands, wearing face coverings in enclosed spaces, and social distancing where we can.

“Together we can help keep the rate as low as possible as we go into the Autumn and Winter.”

Professor Mike Wade, Deputy Regional Director and NHS Regional Director for Public Health England South West said: “With cases of COVID remaining high everyone is asked to continue to act carefully and responsibly.

“Day trippers, holidaymakers and residents need to protect themselves and others from COVID-19 and continue to exercise caution.”

FULL LIST OF MSOA in the Devon Live article

“If you want a greener world, resist the rising tide of concrete.”

George Monbiot www.theguardian.com

Dig for victory: this, repurposed from the second world war, could be the slogan of our times. All over the world, governments are using the pandemic and the environmental crisis to justify a new splurge of infrastructure spending. In the US, Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure framework “will make our economy more sustainable, resilient, and just”. In the UK, Boris Johnson’s build back better programme will “unite and level up the country”, under the banner of “green growth”. China’s belt and road project will bring the world together in hyper-connected harmony and prosperity.

Sure, we need some new infrastructure. If people are to drive less, we need new public transport links and safe cycling routes. We need better water treatment plants and recycling centres, new wind and solar plants, and the power lines required to connect them to the grid. But we can no more build our way out of the environmental crisis than we can consume our way out of it. Why? Because new building is subject to the eight golden rules of infrastructure procurement.

Rule 1 is that the primary purpose of new infrastructure is to enrich the people who commission or build it. Even when a public authority plans a new scheme for sensible reasons, first it must pass through a filter: will this make money for existing businesses? This is how, for example, plans to build a new hydrogen infrastructure in the UK appear to have been hijacked. In August, the head of the UK Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association, Chris Jackson, resigned in protest at the government’s plans to promote hydrogen made from fossil methane, rather than producing it only from renewable electricity. He explained that the government’s strategy locks the nation into fossil fuel use. It seems to have the gas industry’s fingerprints all over it.

For the same reason, many of the beneficial projects in Biden’s infrastructure framework and American Jobs Plan have been cut down or stripped out by Congress, leaving behind a catalogue of pork-barrel pointlessness.

Much of the time, schemes are created and driven not by a well-intentioned public authority, but by the demands of industry. Their main purpose – making money – is fulfilled before anyone uses them. Only some projects have the secondary purpose of providing a public service.

Worldwide, construction is the most corrupt of all industries, often dominated by local mafias and driven by massive kickbacks for politicians. If infrastructure is to create any public benefit, it needs to be tightly and transparently regulated. Boris Johnson’s plans to deregulate the planning system and to build a series of free ports, where businesses will be able to escape many labour, customs and environmental rules, will ensure that the link between new building and public need becomes even more tenuous.

Rule 2 is that there’s an inherent bias towards selecting projects with the worst possible value for money. As the economic geographer Bent Flyvbjerg points out, “the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality.” Decisions are routinely based on misinformation and “delusional optimism”. HS2, whose nominal costs have risen from £37.5bn in 2009 to somewhere between £72bn and £110bn today, while its alleged financial benefits have fallen, is not the exception: it’s the global rule. By contrast, for £3bn a year, all bus tickets in the UK could be issued without charge, a policy that would take more cars off the road and reduce emissions much faster than this gigantic white elephant.

Rule 3 is that the environmental benefits of new schemes are routinely overstated while the costs are underplayed. HS2 is again emblematic: though it has been promoted as a greener way to travel, the government’s estimates suggest that it could, overall, release more carbon than it saves. Bypasses that were meant to relieve traffic jams merely shunt congestion to the next pinch point. Big hydroelectric dams routinely produce less electricity than promised while destroying entire ecosystems.

One reason for the environmental costs of new infrastructure is the massive footprint of concrete, whose carbon emissions may never be recouped. Another is the way new building creates new demand. This is an explicit aim of the government’s national infrastructure strategy and its “10-point plan for a green industrial revolution”. But you don’t solve a problem by making it bigger.

Rule 4 is that in countries with high biodiversity, infrastructure is the major driver of habitat destruction. As a paper in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution shows, new infrastructure and the deforestation it causes is highly “spatially contagious”. In other words, one scheme leads to another and then another, expanding the frontier inexorably into crucial habitats. There is an almost perfect relationship between the proximity to a road and the number of forest fires. Roads, above all other factors, are tearing apart the forests of the Amazon, the Congo basin and south-east Asia.

Rule 5 is that massive infrastructure schemes disproportionately affect territories belonging to indigenous people: for centuries their land has been treated as other people’s frontiers. Indigenous groups fought long and hard to establish the principle of “free, prior and informed consent”, which is recognised by the UN and in international law but ignored almost everywhere. This rule applies to all kinds of infrastructure, even those we see as benign. A report by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre shows how renewable energy schemes have often driven a coach and horses through indigenous people’s rights.

Rule 6 is that greener infrastructure will produce a greener outcome only if it’s accompanied by the deliberate retirement of existing infrastructure. In addressing the climate and ecological emergencies, the key issue is not the new things we do, but the old things we stop doing. But while the UK government has plans to fund new rail links, bus services and cycle lanes, it has no plans to retire any road or runway. On the contrary, it boasts about its “record investment in strategic roads” (£27bn). Every major airport in the UK has plans for expansion. Last week, for example, Gatwick airport announced a consultation to raise its passenger numbers from 46 million to 75 million a year.

Rule 7 is that rich nations tend to be oversupplied with some types of infrastructure. One of the simplest, cheapest and most effective green policies is to set aside existing motorway lanes for buses, to create a fast, efficient inter-city service. But where’s the money for construction companies in that?

Rule 8 is that environmental change cannot be delivered only by infrastructure. To be effective, it needs to be accompanied by social change: travelling less as well as travelling better, for example. We need to develop not only new railways and tramlines and wind farms and power lines, but a new way of life.

But while governments and construction companies are happy to give us more of everything, the one thing we cannot have is less. The overarching rule is this: if you want a greener world, resist the rising tide of concrete.

Step forward “Private” Jupp

If he wasn’t Johnson’s fall guy, Raab would be up the creek without a paddleboard

 Marina Hyde Extract from www.theguardian.com

“… To put things into perspective, Raab appears to have tired so completely of the bare-knuckle briefing in Westminster that he’s gone for a mini-break in the Middle East. Or diplomatic mission, as his department officially has it. Alas, that same department has a whole lot more to say unofficially, with a series of hilariously unflattering off-the-record lines reported by the Economist probably the pick of the bunch. According to these, Raab is “tightly wound”, “controlling” and “cold”, and has sidelined ambassadors, diplomats and officials in favour of some kind of spad lads’ army, which has failed to build him any significant relationships with global counterparts. Some Foreign Office officials call him “five Is”, which apparently stands for “insular, imperious, idle, irascible and ignorant”.   …