Requests and Offers from the Stroud Coronavirus Community Response team and beyond
- As well as our Local Business Directory we now have a Local Services Directory!
- This is a difficult time financially for many people, particularly self-employed people offering services. Please support local people in our community if you can. If you have any further names or services to add, please complete our questionnaire.
- After a successful #ClapForOurCarers and #SoldarityWithShopWorkers (and other Key Workers) event, we’re promoting another #LightUpOurValleys (and Vale) event… and we have a question for you! If we shine a light to stay connected… what shall we sing while we do it? Please add your song suggestions as comments on this Facebook post.
- We now have over 3,900 members in our Facebook group. We posted a reminder to please use our OFFER/REQUEST/IMPORTANT UPDATE/QUESTION system when submitting posts to our Facebook Group. We’ve dealt with around 2,000 posts in the past few weeks, and it makes moderating much easier if people use this system
- Uplands and Slad Rd area Coronavirus help have raised over £300 to “provide a backup fund for our corner of Stroud to provide help for the vulnerable in the area so that they have food help as soon as they need it and so that no one individual helping ends up hugely out of pocket in helping those in their neighbourhood”
- There is advice for neighbour networks on how to deal with money on the National Covid-19 Mutual Aid website. The Social Change Agency is providing “a platform to help community groups and collectives who have formed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, easily receive donations and pay expenses via opencollective.com”
Local updates:
- Stroud District Council posted 12 ideas to help their waste and recycling crews at this time.
- Transition Stroud published their monthly newsletter with lots of great relevant resources and links (including covering our own work – thank you!)
- “Nailsworth Primary School is offering hot meals for anyone in the community who needs them. Its a new venture, with the chef having the capacity to provide hot food for schoolchildren and their families during this period and can offer it to those in need in the Nailsworth community. Meals cost £3 and can be ordered by telephoning the school (by 9.30 am that day) or sending an email- admin@nailsworth.gloucs.sch.uk. Meals can be collected from the side hatch at school, or delivered.” (Thanks to Stroud Fair Share for this update)
- Warm and well have started a blog offering information and advice linked to COVID-19 and energy bills. Today’s blog is ‘five energy saving tips for the unexpectedly housebound’. Tomorrows will be ‘What can my energy company do to help me during coronavirus?
- Stroud Valleys Project launched a new interactive wildlife spotting website www.wildclassrooms.org. It is based around the challenge to see if you can spot 60 different plants and animals in a year. When individuals or groups register, they are given a virtual tree with bare branches. Each month they will be given five species to spot and when they are recorded on the site, a leaf will appear on their own tree. The more things they spot, the more leaves on their tree! Something nice to do with children on daily exercise walks or in gardens if you have one.
- Stroud resident and journalist with Open Democracy UK, Caroline Molloy, is looking to interview people who’ve been financially hit by the covid19 crisis and for whom the government support on offer isn’t sufficient to meet their needs. Email caroline.molloy[at]opendemocracy.net, with ‘covid money’ in subject line if you can, telling me a little bit about your situation
- “A Whiteshill and Rushcombe Parish councillor has paid tribute to the NHS by painting a bus stop in Whiteshill. Cllr Karon Vizor-Beard and her husband Greg decided to paint the bus stop in Victory Road to pay tribute to the incredible work being carried out by NHS staff in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.” (Stroud News And Journal)
- “Nineteen people have died from Covid 19 in the [NHS] trust which covers Gloucestershire Royal Hospital and Cheltenham General Hospital. The figures do not include deaths in the community which are being counted separately. The number of cases are recorded on a different timeline and cover geographical areas rather than hospital trusts.” (Gloucestershire Live)
- 208 people in Gloucestershire have tested positive to 208 – up 36 from 172 yesterday (Gloucestershire Live, same link as above). It is important to say that these are confirmed cases only, and that since testing has been suspended for all cases but those needing hospitalisation, we do not have an accurate number for the actual number of cases in the community.
National:
- “As of 9am 2 April, a total of 163,194 people have been tested of which 33,718 tested positive. As of 5pm on 1 April, of those hospitalised in the UK who tested positive for coronavirus, 2,921 have sadly died… 10,657 tests were carried out yesterday in England” (Department of Health and Social Care tweets)
- “The government is facing growing pressure to ramp up coronavirus testing, as the UK saw its biggest daily increase in deaths. Some 2,352 virus patients have died in hospital as of 17:00 on Tuesday – up 563 in a day” (BBC News)
- “A doctor who came out of retirement to volunteer for the NHS became the fourth UK medic to die with the virus.” (BBC News)
Global:
- Confirmed global cases pass one million (BBC News)
- “cases doubled in the past eight days. It took 75 days to log the first 500,000 cases around the world… The global fatality rate has now risen above 5% of all reported cases, with the UK, the US and Spain among countries reporting a spike in fatalities in recent days” (Guardian)
- More than 50,000 people who have tested positive for the virus have died [51,485]
- 1,002,159 people worldwide have tested positive for the virus
- 208,949 people have tested positive for the virus but recovered (above all from Johns Hopkins University tracker)
Please remember we have a (growing) list of resources to support your emotional and mental health during this time on our website.
Thanks to everyone who submitted posts in our Facebook group that contributed to this daily update!