Key Item:
The Independent SAGE group has released its report on “the priorities for measures to be taken to support a gradual release from social distancing measures”.
We endorse this report, in particular Recommendation 10:
“Communities and civil society organisations should have a voice, be informed, engaged and participatory in the exit from lockdown. This pandemic starts and ends within communities.”
Read more on our post in the Facebook group.
Today’s update includes:
- Requests & Offers from the Stroud Coronavirus Community Response team & beyond
- Summary of key local, national and international news
Requests, Offers and Updates posted in the Stroud Coronavirus Community Response Facebook group
- The leader of Stroud District Council, Doina Cornell, shared an open letter to the Director of Public Health containing some queries about the government’s proposals for approaches to contact tracing. The letter was signed by local district councillors and politicians.
- Public Health England data has revealed that of the 48 care homes in Stroud, eight had reported a confirmed or suspected case of Covid-19 up to May 3rd. The rate in Stroud is lower than across the rest of the South West, where 24% of care homes have been affected so far.
- Sarah Dixon reminded us to check and see if you’re eligible for a self employment grant. The process is pretty straightforward, if you already have a Government Gateway account.
- The Stroud News and Journal reported that local dairy farmers who have lost income due to the pandemic can now access £10,000 of government hardship money. Read through our post about this in the Facebook group for more information.
- Miriam Yagud shared a post about support for employees from Stroud District Labour Councillors.
- Are you a therapist, healing practitioner, or have lived experience? If you have insights to share about keeping emotionally as well as you can, about how you are doing with the process we are in, your experiences, do share with the group. You could post a few minutes of video about what your thoughts are; you could let us know your top tips for emotional resilience, or a story about how you’re getting through this.
- Do you have a business operating at this time? We are growing our list of services including various support and therapies.
- Leigh Creamer reminded us that many front-line workers still need PPE to protect themselves. See http://www.ppemaker.net/.
- Sarah Dixon is offering three free Zoom workshops on emotional resilience. The first one is Friday 22nd May.
- We now have 4,314 members. Please invite your friends to grow this community. And please do introduce yourself and let us know anything you’d like to see in the group related to coronavirus and how we can work together to get through the pandemic and its impacts.
- Please take a look at the Group Purpose and Guidelines if you haven’t read them recently.
Summary of key local, national and international news
- A vaccine for coronavirus must be available to all countries, the EU has insisted.
- 36 million US citizens are now unemployed.
- The first reported case of coronavirus has been found in Bangladesh’s vast Rohingya refugee camps.
- Governments, health authorities and civil society groups should urgently address mental health problems sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, the UN secretary general has said.
- Ten people in Vietnam have offered to donate their lungs to a British man who is the country’s most seriously ill Covid-19 patient.
- (international updates above all from the Guardian daily news feed and summary)
A reminder that we will now be providing our summary of local, national and international statistical data on a weekly basis (on Tuesdays) rather than daily. You can read our first weekly summary of local, national and international statistics in next Tuesday’s update.
Notes
Please remember we have a (growing) list of resources to support your emotional and mental health during this time on our website. The following numbers may be useful:
- Samaritans: 116 123
- Domestic Violence Hotline: 0808 2000 247
- Mind: 0300 123 3393
- Age UK: 0800 169 6565
- Childline: 0800 1111.
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