Saturday 18th April 2020

Today’s update includes:

• Major announcements and milestones:
• Requests and Offers from the Stroud Coronavirus Community Response team and beyond
• Summary of local news
• Key national and international news

Major announcements and milestones:

• “WHO and Global Citizen are joining forces with many of the world’s leading musicians, comedians and humanitarians for the “One World, Together At Home” global special. It will be broadcast/livestream on major social media networks, streaming services, and major television networks worldwide on 18–19 April 2020. Further information and local listings are available on the Global Citizen website” (WHO)
• Over 15,000 people have died in hospitals in the UK. This figure does not include those dying in other settings, and The Telegraph reports that up to 7,500 care home residents may have died of the virus.
• Globally, over 150,000 people have died after testing positive (158,422), and there are now more than 2.3 million cases confirmed through testing (2,300,874). 

Requests and Offers from the Stroud Coronavirus Community Response team and beyond

• Emergency planners in Gloucestershire have appealed for businesses and individuals to donate PPE. We shared a tweet from Gloucestershire First: “Can your business help to support health & social care colleagues in Gloucestershire overcome a temporary shortage they are facing in relation to various items of PPE? Disposable gloves, Face masks, Sanitiser, Full cover disposable suits?” Contact Gloucestershire County Council
• PPE was dropped to Sue Ryder Leckhampton Court Hospice by our volunteers Haroon Kadodia and Hassan MG on behalf of Barton & Tredworth COVID Support Group.
• Can you help producing visors? More than 325 visors have been sent off already to local NHS, but 39,000 more are needed. Please get in touch with Paul Denney if you have experience with Arizona UV Flatbed Printers, Zund cutting systems, wide format printing or CNC router systems.
• Tom Lawson is “retrospectively raising funds to cover some (not all!) of the costs of producing emergency face-shields for front line workers in the local area who may be missed by the larger national efforts, or otherwise not qualify due to short supply” (£1,084 of £1,500 target reached. We know some of these shields have been put to use)
• Contact  Chrissie Lowery who’s coordinating ‘For the love of scrubs-Gloucestershire’. if you can help sew scrubs, hair bands and bags for the NHS.
• Siobhan Baillie has said that any specific PPE concerns or needs can be raised with her and she will try to help. Her email is siobhan.baillie.mp@parliament.uk and you’ll need to provide your name & address. Please continue to share PPE concerns or needs in our Facebook group, where we have already been able to assist people very quickly.
• “The Children’s Paediatric ward at Gloucester Royal Hospital is now operating as the Children’s A&E Department so please bring your unwell child/children (16 years and under) here directly (not to the main A&E) follow the signs 🌈 Please don’t hesitate to come.. don’t be scared.. We are all here to help 24/7 
• The Priory Tetbury is delivering Food Boxes to Tetbury, Stroud, Malmesbury, Kemble, Minchinhampton, Nailsworth, Avening and surrounding areas
• We now have over 4160 members in our Facebook group with 78 new members this week
• Please use our OFFER/REQUEST/IMPORTANT UPDATE/QUESTION system when submitting posts to our Facebook Group. We’ve dealt with 2,876 posts in the past few weeks, and it makes moderating much easier if people use this system.

Local updates:

• Ten more people die from coronavirus in Gloucestershire with 57 more cases in the past 24 hours (Gloucestershire Live). There are now 825 confirmed cases in Gloucestershire. 125 people have died of the virus in hospital. It is not known how many have died in care homes or in the community. The true number of cases will also be much higher as testing is still not widespread 
• Gloucestershire GP – and health correspondent for The Times newspaper – Dr Mark Porter spoke out over the lack of NHS access to PPE during this coronavirus crisis, tweeting “To all the politicians and NHS providers who insist it’s safe for staff to work without proper gowns, please spend part of this weekend volunteering on a ward / unit caring for patients with Covid19 rather than quoting WHO. It should help focus your minds.” (Gloucestershire Live report)
• Gloucestershire Live published a piece summarising “What the local NHS has changed to cope with increasing pressure”, and quoting “Health bosses in Gloucestershire [as saying] they’re ‘well prepared’ for the expected peak in hospital admissions relating to the coronavirus this month.” 
• “Two Gloucestershire men who became friends while battling for their lives against Coronavirus say they cannot thank NHS workers enough – and they want their survival to give hope to others” (Gloucestershire Live)

National news:

• Over 15,000 people have died in hospitals in the UK: “As of 9am 18 April, 460,437 tests have concluded, with 21,389 tests on 17 April. 357,023 people have been tested of which 114,217 tested positive. As of 5pm on 17 April, of those hospitalised in the UK who tested positive for coronavirus, 15,464 have sadly died.”
• 888 people died in the most recent 24-hour period, and 5,526 tested positive. Again, neither figure suggests a downward trend (above figures and quote from Department of Health and Social Care tweet)
• Care England, Britain’s largest representative body for care homes, told the Daily Telegraph, that up to 7,500 care home residents may have died of the virus. This is significantly higher than the figure of 1,400 people estimated to have died by the government earlier this week 
• “The government has accepted that personal protective equipment (PPE) is in short supply and promised that a large consignment, including 400,000 gowns is due to arrive in the UK from Turkey on Sunday… The NHS is using about 150,000 gowns a day and more is needed in other healthcare settings” (The Guardian)
• “Unions and professional bodies said that NHS staff may refuse to work if there was not enough PPE to ensure their safety, in response to new guidance from Public Health England (PHE), revealed by the Guardian on Friday, which instructs healthcare workers to reuse disposable PPE. The guidelines also recommended that medics wear aprons if they are unable to access full-length gowns” (The Guardian)
• “Parks and cemeteries must remain open and close family can attend loved ones’ funerals, Local Government Secretary Robert Jenrick has said… He also announced an extra £1.6bn for local councils in England” (BBC News) 
• “Public Health England is to start recording coronavirus cases and deaths by ethnicity…after research suggests people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds are at greater risk of becoming seriously ill with Covid-19. Downing Street has commissioned an investigation into the issue.” (BBC News)
• Farms across the UK are looking to take on furloughed staff (Stroud News and Journal). The Guardian notes that teams of workers from Romania are being flown in as contract length, farm location and caring duties are cited as reasons for British workers turning down farm work

International developments:

• There are more than 2.3 million cases now confirmed (2,300,874). Over 150,000 people have died after testing positive (158,422). (Johns Hopkins University tracker) “the true figure is thought to be much higher as many of those with milder symptoms have not been tested and counted.” (BBC News)
• “WHO and Global Citizen are joining forces with many of the world’s leading musicians, comedians and humanitarians for the “One World, Together At Home” global special. It will be broadcast/livestream on major social media networks, streaming services, and major television networks worldwide on 18–19 April 2020. Further information and local listings are available on the Global Citizen website” (WHO)
• The show – featuring The Rolling Stones, Lady Gage and Billie Eilish among others starts with a six-hour pre-concert at 19:00 BST on Saturday, followed by the main two-hour TV broadcast at 01:00 BST on Sunday. The entire event will be streamed live. In the UK, BBC One will screen highlights of the concert at 19:15-21:15 BST on Sunday
• Spain: “prime minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday he would ask parliament for a third 15-day extension of the lockdown imposed to curb one of the world’s worst outbreaks of the new coronavirus, taking the restrictions up to 9 May”. The number of those who have died has “topped 20,000 after 565 new fatalities were recorded in the last 24 hours.”
• Bangladesh: “Hundreds of workers in Bangladesh have taken to the streets in defiance of physical distancing rules to demand unpaid wages during the Covid-19 shutdown.”
• Iran: “Iran allowed some businesses in the capital Tehran to reopen on Saturday as the country’s daily death toll from coronavirus fell to 73, its lowest in more than a month.”
• Japan: “The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases has hit 10,000 in Japan, the country’s public broadcaster has reported”

Notes

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 helped create this update through our Facebook group. If you submit posts, we will often decline posting them to the discussion directly and instead hold them till the single daily summary – to try to reduce the number of posts in the feed and make it easier for people to follow the information. Please continue to submit posts to admins for this purpose with a flag REQUEST / OFFER / UPDATE / QUESTION