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
- e-Cycle Stroud announced that their “stores remain open as normal, one customer in store at once, for test rides please phone or email us in advance to book a time slot.”
- Wendy Thomson is selling “hand sanitister 80% Alcohol WHO formulation and produced with HMRC licence & HSE guidance by local small business. £10 for 3 x 125ml sprays, £10.50 1 x 500ml refill with 2 x empty 125ml sprays. Free local delivery or collection on arrangement. Email office@wendygoesgreen.co.uk or phone 01453 791083″
- Leigh Creamer asks “Has anyone got a few hours a week to become a local PPE coordinator for this area and help connect workers who need PPE with those making and supplying it?”
- A reminder that The Subscription Rooms are seeking responses to a short survey – please take 10 minutes to fill it in. They’ve already have 700 responses but the more the better. They say “Some of the ideas and feedback we’ve had has been so helpful – THANK YOU!”
- We now have 4,325 members. We welcomed 22 new members this week. We’ve had 1008 posts in the last month, 9 today. 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
We are now providing our summary of local, national and international statistical data on a weekly basis rather than daily.
- Gloucestershire Live have published a list of a “host of don’t do this, stay away or don’t stay for long messages have been put out in Gloucestershire, England and across the border in Wales.”
- Also in Gloucestershire Live, a piece on “How lockdown has impacted the Muslim community in Gloucester during Ramadam“.
- “A 10-year-old from Stroud will be walking 10 miles around his garden tomorrow in a bid to raise much needed funds for Stroud District Foodbank.” (Stroud News and Journal)
- Stroud MP Siobhan Baillie writes for Stroud News and Journal to argue that the “Benefits of schools reopening outweigh [the] risks“
- “The moves to reopen schools in the UK are “political decisions” not supported by scientific evidence, a SAGE member said” yesterday”Professor John Edmunds, who is one of the government’s main scientific modellers “said that ministers claiming they are ‘following the science’ is ‘misleading’. Speaking to LBC, the professor added: “It’s wrong to say that that’s being done by a group of epidemiologists – it just isn’t. These are political choices. “It’s politicians’ jobs to do that and they are doing that – it’s just sometimes they’re pretending that they’re not and they’re just sort of ‘following the science’. But which aspect of the science are they following at this particular moment?” (The Mirror)
- “Ministers rejected school reopening plan recommended by Sage experts. Documents reveal that PM’s current plan was not among those modelled for scientists… The papers revealed that a low-risk scenario where pupils in England would attend school on alternating weeks was presented to the government as the most likely way to gain popular support, before ministers instead settled on their plan for a widespread reopening on 1 June.” (The Guardian)
- “A member of the UK government’s scientific advisory group, known as SAGE, has told the BBC he would have liked the government to have acted earlier in the fight against coronavirus. Sir Ian Boyd, a professor of biology at St Andrews University, told the Coronavirus Newscast: “I would have loved to have seen us acting a week or two weeks earlier and it would have made quite a big difference to the steepness of the curve of infection and therefore the death rate… Professor Boyd, who was the chief scientific adviser at the environment department from 2012-19, also called on ministers to stop saying they were “led” by the science as it was “slightly misleading”.” (BBC News)
- Advisor to the Prime Minister Dominic Cummings ignored coronavirus lockdown rules for a second time (Telegraph). Durham Police have contradicted Downing Street’s claim that “at no stage was [Dominic Cummings] or his family spoken to by the police about this matter”, saying “At the request of Mr Cummings’ father, an officer made contact… During the conversation, Mr Cummings’ father confirmed that his son had travelled with his family from London to the North-East and was self-isolating in part of the property. Durham Constabulary deemed that no further action was required. However, the officer did provide advice in relation to security issues”.
- “Employers will be required to pay a quarter of the wages of furloughed staff under Treasury plans to unwind the state subsidy scheme. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, is expected to announce next week that employers will have to contribute from August as the lockdown is eased.” (The Times)
- “Former Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen has been moved out of intensive care after “a long and difficult” 47 days, his wife has said.” (BBC News)
- “Hydroxychloroquine: Trump’s Covid-19 ‘cure’ increases deaths, global study finds” (The Guardian reporting study published in The Lancet): “The authors of the paper pulled together results for more than 96,000 patients in 671 hospitals, taking one of the drugs, with or without an antibiotic such as azithromycin, between 20 December and 14 April. The death rate among all groups taking the drugs was higher than among people who were not given them”
- “People arriving in France from the UK will have to self-isolate for 14 days from 8 June, the French government has announced. It comes after Home Secretary Priti Patel revealed quarantine plans for visitors to the UK from the same date.” (BBC News)
- “Spain to reopen to overseas tourists from July” (The Guardian)
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