Lockdown Wales E-Book

Will Hayward

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 429

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

In 2020 everyone's lives were taken over by the Covid-19 pandemic. No-one was unaffected. The spring lockdown changed the way we lived, the way we looked at each other and at ourselves. Big questions engaged us all: PPE, the health service, care homes, shielding. We became used to new words: 'social distancing', 'track and trace', 'ramping up'. We were agog as we watched our political leaders attempt to deal with 'unprecedented events' and make their daily television announcements. Yet appalling fatalities and ill health were also accompanied by some good things: a change of pace, new respect for the NHS, a sense of being part of something huge and necessary. As the year closed amid new lockdowns and restrictions, and a long-awaited vaccine heaved into view for 2021, Lockdown Wales asks how Covid-19 affected us. It explores how it tested Wales, and the rest of the UK, after years of austerity policy had left the country with an 'underlying condition'. It relates stories of ordinary people against a backdrop of political and social change. It asks questions of politicians in Westminster and Cardiff Bay. It wonders how Wales, its UK neighbours and the rest of the world work together. It concludes that there can be no going back, that a new way of doing things is needed now.

Leseprobe

L O C K D O W N W A L E S

How Covid-19 Tested Wales

L O C K D O W N W A L E S

How Covid-19 Tested Wales

W I L L H A Y W A R D

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd,

Suite 6, 4 Derwen Road, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 1LH

www.serenbooks.com

facebook.com/SerenBooks

Twitter: @SerenBooks

© Will Hayward, 2020

The rights of the above mentioned to be identified as

the author of this work have been asserted in accordance

with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act.

ISBN: 9781781726013

Ebook: 9781781726006

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without

the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance

of the Welsh Books Council.

Printed by Severn, Gloucester

CONTENTS

Introduction

Introducing Covid-19

Part I

1.Around the World in 60 Days

2.Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives

3.A Death Warrant from the Grim Reaper

4.Please, Take My Liberty

5.Thank You, Key Workers

6.‘What the F___ Is the Matter With Her?’

7.Lies, Damn Lies and 100,000 Tests by the End of April

8.The Virus Can’t Get You As Long As You Stay Alert

9.‘Too Fast, Too Confusing and Too Risky’

10.‘Welcome to the Opticians, If You Would Please Start Your Engine We Can Begin’

11.A Five Mile World

12.An Attack on the Fundamentals of Humanity

13.The First Wave Ends

Part II

14.PPE: Left Undefended

15.Care Homes: Wales’ Predictable Disaster

16.Testing Times

17.The Impact of Coronavirus on People of Colour

18.CardiffBay and Westminster Relations: Walking in Lockstep?

19.The State of the UK

Notes

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Do you ever just take a moment among all the noise, announcements, changes to restrictions and just ask yourself: What has happened?

As I write this, Wales is in a two-week ‘firebreak’ and England is heading into a one month lockdown to try and get on top of spiraling cases. In the space of just six months, all our worlds have changed. We now think twice about hugging friends and family we don’t live with. People we used to see every day now only appear in our lives as pixels on a screen. Diaries that were full of trips, visits and occasions are empty, after all, what is the point in making plans too far ahead?

In the middle of something so seismic, so enormous, and frankly, so horrible, it is hard to fully grasp what has happened. There is just so much depressing news. The temptation can naturally be to just try and let it wash over you. To just push your headphones deeper into your ears to drown out the relentlessness of it all.

That is why I wrote this book. It is not written for epidemiologists. It is not written for policy boffins. It is certainly not written for politicians or self styled ‘politicos’ in Cardiff Bay and Westminster. This book is written as an aid for people in Wales to understand what has happened to themselves, their families and their lives.

And it is important that we do understand. In the age of fake news, when people would have us believe that facts are open to interpretation, an understanding of an issue prevents misinformation from flooding in to fill the gaps. But understanding is most important because the issue isn’t just what happened to us, but why.

Hearing politicians speak you would be under the impression that the loss of lives, jobs and futures was inevitable – an act of nature. The virus of course was inevitable. Even if it had not been Covid-19, it was only a matter of time before a new and emerging infectious disease emerged to threaten us. The virus was inevitable, but an appalling lack of preparation as well as an initially sluggish and anaemic response was not.

A pandemic had long been identified as one the biggest threats facing society. In 2016, the UK government conducted ‘Exercise Cygnus’, a simulation to test readiness for a pandemic, and found us lacking. But as this book and our own lived experience shows us, four years later, we were not ready. As other countries have demonstrated, the number of deaths and the economic catastrophe that followed were not because of the virus, they were the result of decisions.

If we fail to understand fully what happened to us and why, we fail to hold to account those responsible. In not holding the decision makers to account we also doom ourselves to repeat this suffering in the future.

But this is not ultimately a story about politicians or Covid-19. This is a story about the people of Wales – and how both the virus and decisions made by politicians affected them. It is about how people in Wales both suffered and died, but also rose magnificently to the challenge.

The theme that will come up time and again throughout this book is not that Covid-19 wreaked havoc on a thriving United Kingdom. The UK in 2020 was a road with hundreds of small potholes. They could have been filled in while the sun was shining but they were not. Covid was the water that filled those potholes and then froze overnight, cracking open the shortcomings in our society into fissures. These potholes will not come as a surprise. An underfunded health service, a political culture that scorns collaboration and long term planning, a hodge-podge approach to social care as well huge economic, gender and racial inequality to name but a few.

This book is divided into two parts. The first is a chronology, tracking how the virus developed in Wales from December 2019 to July 2020. The second looks at the key themes and issues that arose in the first wave of the virus.

The book records and explores events up until July 6 – the first day that no deaths were announced in Wales since the lockdown began. In many ways this is a shame. There were dozens of other circumstances subsequently that fall outside the scope of the book that I would love to have covered: the A-level and GCSE result saga, the failures in the UK Government’s Lighthouse Labs and the October firebreak lockdown with the Welsh Government’s ban on the sale of non-essential goods.

At time of writing Wales and the wider UK sadly seem to be entering a second wave. Though this is not covered in the book, the events of March through July are the foundations of everything that has come since. If the outbreak in March had been handled better, perhaps the UK wouldn’t be preparing for a socially distanced Christmas.

At the beginning of February 2020 I was offered the job of acting Political Editor at WalesOnline and the Western Mail – the national newspaper of Wales. The current political editor was going on maternity leave for around twelve months from the end of March and I was asked to step into the role from my post as Social Affairs Correspondent.

When the Editor-in-Chief and I spoke about the subjects I would look to cover over this period all the discussion was about issues like poverty, the end of the Brexit transition period and ways to make politics accessible and relevant to readers. We had no idea that from the start of March almost every story I would cover for the next six months would be about just one thing.

Through my new position I was able to interview on a near daily basis the people making the decisions that changed all our lives. I hope I am able to provide insight into what has happened to us all.

This book is not intended to make a political point. It is about how Covid-19 affected the people of Wales. However, political decision-making is intrinsically linked to this, and criticism and analysis of our politicians’ performance is inevitable.

No one is doubting how hard the task before them was. However it is my strongly held belief that to put oneself forward as a Member of Parliament or a Member of the Senedd (or any elected representative for that matter), is an act of supreme confi-dence. You are standing before people and telling them that you, and only you, are best placed to make their lives better. You are asking to be trusted with power over their lives, to decide how their children are educated and how they will be treated when they are old. You and your political party are asking for permission to tax their wages on the understanding that you will use the proceeds to make their society better. You are saying that you can guide them through any crises. It shows total self assuredness. Because of this, you must be held to a higher standard. On morality, integrity and simple competence it is not enough to be ‘not too bad’. That is the standard I am applying within this book.

There are two final points to make. The first is to note that this is an incredibly fast moving situation. The science of this virus is progressing every single day. It is perfectly possible that some of the analysis I do within these pages will eventually be out of date as our understanding grows. Frankly, I really hope that is the case because it means we are better placed to stop Covid having such a hold on our lives.

The second point is that no single book can cover all of the issues that the coronavirus pandemic raised. With a fast moving situation, it was often necessary to only touch on very worthy subjects for the sake of a coherent narrative. For that I can only apologise.

The crisis has changed Wales, the UK and in all likelihood the entire course of human history. Understanding what has happened to us and why is the first step in ensuring that, in the longer term, it is change for the better.

Introducing Covid-19

Allow me to introduce severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2 for short. On February 11, 2020, this was the name given to the virus which has turned our lives upside down.

Viruses and the subsequent diseases they cause, are often named differently. The virus HIV causing AIDS is one example of this. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus which causes the disease called Covid-19.

Though it is a virus which up until December 2019 we had never seen before, we are very familiar with its family. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that often cause mild or moderate illnesses in the upper-respiratory tract: the nasal cavities, sinuses, pharynx, tonsils, and larynx. There are four coronaviruses that cause mild or moderate disease in humans and the chances are you will contract one of them over the course of your life.

There are also three that can cause more serious or deadly disease. One of them, SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV,) emerged in November 2002 and caused severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). That virus disappeared by 2004. Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is caused by the MERS coronavirus (MERSCoV) that came from camels in 2012, and is still seen in localised outbreaks.

If you become infected with Covid-19 it has most likely entered your body after inhaling an infected person’s virus-laden droplets, though you may have touched an infected surface and then touched your face. In the early stage the virus then multiples at the back of the throat.

There is a reasonable chance that you may not get any symptoms at all. The exact probability is hard to calculate because people with no symptoms are far less likely to be tested. If symptoms do develop they can be wide-ranging: fever, body ache, dry cough, fatigue, chills, headache, sore throat, loss of appetite, and loss of smell. Some people also experience neurological symptoms, muscle weakness, tingling or numbness in the hands and feet, dizziness, confusion, delirium, seizures, and stroke. There are also those who have gastrointestinal symptoms, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain or discomfort.

The virus can badly affect your lung cells, binding on to an enzyme called ACE2 which is the surface of some of the cells in the air sacs of the lungs. The virus uses the ACE2 to gain entry and attack the cells causing inflammation leading to pneumonia.

It is estimated around 6% of cases become critically ill (these estimates do vary). Some patients have suffered strokes and seizures with some developing severe pneumonia and dying from respiratory failure. Covid-19 patients have ultimately died from several causes including from low blood oxygen levels, organ failure, heart failure, respiratory failure and severe blood clotting and embolisms.

The long term effects of the virus on those who survive is unknown but many have experienced long term issues affecting the respiratory system, the brain, cardiovascular system and heart, the kidneys, the gut, the liver, and the skin.

It is a horrible, nasty disease. One thing to be thankful for is that it did not seem to affect children as severely. Emerging in late 2019 in Wuhan China, it was circulating in every part of Wales in a matter of months.

PART I

1. Around the World in 60 Days

At the start of December 2019, when we were all concentrating on getting Brexit done, a general election and who had won the Apprentice final, doctors in the Chinese city of Wuhan were concerned about a spike in pneumonia cases there.

On December 30 a doctor named Li Wenliang messaged1 his old medical school classmates on WeChat, a private messaging app, after reading case reports showing seven people with what seemed to be a new type of coronavirus. He told his friends, “There are seven confirmed cases of SARS at Huanan Seafood Market” before sending pictures of the diagnosis reports. One of the others in the group warmed him to ‘be careful’ writing about something like that in a private message group. But Li replied: “The latest news is, it has been confirmed that they are coronavirus infections, but the exact virus is being subtyped. Don’t circulate the information outside of this group; tell your family and loved ones to take precautions.”

In an example of what was to become the global dismissal and underplaying of evidence, where perceived political expedience and maintaining power took precedence over the health of humanity, Li was given a formal written warning by the Wuhan Public Security Bureau for publishing untrue statements and made to sign a letter promising not to do it again. On February 7, as the total deaths in China went through the 600 mark, Dr Li Wenliang died from the virus he tried to warn people about2.

The situation had developed. On January 1 the seafood market, the likely centre of the outbreak, was closed – two days later China officially notified the World Health Organisation about a ‘viral pneumonia of unknown cause’3. By January 14, travellers leaving Wuhan’s airports and railway stations were being screened for the virus but it was becoming clear how far its tendrils had already travelled from the city, a major transport hub.

On January 23 the Chinese government imposed a lockdown on Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province. Unfortunately, despite how hard they were now slamming the door, the virus and its spike proteans, had already bolted. The very next day Malaysia, France,Vietnam and Nepal all confirmed their first cases, the USA confirmed its second and the following day Australia and Canada also confirmed their first. January 25 would see the beginning of a trend that would in a matter of months become a familiar news report in Wales – Liang Wudong, a doctor who had been on the front line of the fight against the virus became the first doctor to die from it.

In the UK the risk level was raised from ‘very low’ to ‘low’ meaning that Heathrow Airport increased surveillance on the three direct flights a week from Wuhan while the authorities began trying to trace the 2,000 people who had already flown into the UK over the preceding fourteen days.

It is easy in retrospect, months and even years later, to think that in those early days we didn’t really know what we were dealing with yet. If we do this, or allow policy makers to suggest this was the case after the fact, we will be complicit in the rewriting of history. Health MinisterVaughan Gething was challenged at length about the threat posed by coronavirus in the Senedd as early as January 29. The questions being asked by a member of the Senedd at the time reflected a real and genuine concern from MSs. Caroline Jones said: “The threat we face from this new strain of coronavirus is of grave concern” and Conservative MS Angela Burns enquired: “does Wales have any emergency treatment centre planning in place, in case we get to a situation where this does develop further?” It was also common knowledge at the time that someone could carry the virus for a considerable time before noticing symptoms, with Janet Finch-Saunders stating: “My concerns, Minister, are that the virus seems to be spreading like a normal flu during its incubation period and before any symptoms appear.”4

Mr Gething stressed that the Welsh Government was not being complacent but he was certain he didn’t “want to add to the impression that a more significant health risk is on its way than is likely.” He added that “it’s worth reflecting that the ’flu makes people severely unwell and kills people every year, and yet, we still can’t persuade people who are in a category where they can receive a free NHS vaccine, to take that up in the numbers we’d want them to. So, let’s have some perspective on it.” In the same debateVaughan Gething described ‘quarantine’ as “a dreadful, old-fashioned word” – we couldn’t know that it would soon become part of our vernacular along with ‘furlough’, ‘social distancing’, ‘ramp up’ and ‘flattening the curve’.

What this debate demonstrated was that as early as January it was known that Covid-19 was a threat, that it could incubate for a considerable amount of time, that it was killing people and that both the UK and Welsh Government had time to prepare. As we moved into February life went on, Coronavirus was a news item, but not the news item. Wales hosted Italy in the Six Nations at the Principality Stadium in February. No one knew that the virus had already started to take root in the Lombardy area, with Italy soon to see the first mass outbreak and then lockdown in Europe. On the 21st the first lockdowns covering ten municipalities in the province of Lodi in Lombardy and one in the province of Padua inVeneto began, covering around 50,000 people. But even then, as an advanced healthcare system began to be overwhelmed – still life went on.The very next day Italy hosted Scotland in the Six Nations at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome – Scotland fans travelled to watch the game. Just two weeks later on March 8 the lockdown would cover the entire north of the country before being extended to the whole of Italy the following day.

On March 1, 62 days after Dr Li Wenliang’s warning, Wales had its first known case of the virus – a person from the Swansea area who had recently returned from northern Italy. This took the UK total to 355 with some identified as originating in Italy and Iran. A cause for concern was that it was unclear how some of the infected people had contracted it, suggesting community transmission.

On the same day the Daily Telegraph broke the news that Number 10 had vetoed the UK staying inside the EU’s Early Warning and Response System (EWRS) established in 1988 to respond to viruses which had been vital in tackling the bird flu outbreak6. The Department for Health had wanted to remain in the system but Downing Street, under the control of the Prime Minister and Dominic Cummings, had insisted. It was an early, but sadly not solitary, example of how political expediency took precedence over keeping people safe. health secretary Matt Hancock was also not allowed to travel to a meeting of EU health ministers following the UK’s exit from the EU a month before.

The Prime Minister told the country on March 2 that the UK Government were ‘well prepared’ for a pandemic. That statement was completely debunked by Exercise Cygnus in 20167 (the study that found the UK was not ready for a large pandemic) and by the events of the next six weeks. This is not to suggest that the PM was being deliberately misleading, given the reports that Mr Johnson likes to have his notes limited to two sides of A4 it is entirely possible he hadn’t actually read Exercise Cygnus8. Either way, were these the safest pair of hands in which to be nestled?

Regardless, Mr Johnson himself did not seem to care about the safety of his hands. The following day he proudly told a press conference9 that he “was at a hospital the other night where there were actually a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody, you will be pleased to know”.

It is worth reflecting that when the Prime Minister (the Prime Minister!) spoke these words of pure idiocy, across the world more than 90,000 people in over forty countries had been infected with coronavirus. Of these, 3,119 had died. China had built huge field hospitals, the virus was transmitting in the community in the very country Johnson governed and Italy had been in a partial lockdown for over a week. But this throwaway remark demonstrates far greater shortcomings in our political system than the fact that our leader behaves like a buffoon.

There are three things worthy of attention. First is the idea of British exceptionalism which seems to have blinded the Government to the reality of the situation. Italy and China had both already seen parts of their country overwhelmed and their citizens die. These are not developing countries, they had all the tools the UK had to combat the virus and were often better equipped, yet still there was a sense of ‘this couldn’t happen to us’. In the same way that not being successfully invaded for a millennium makes some people disdainful of the values of organisations like the EU, so too does the fact that previous outbreaks like Sars and Ebola never took hold in the UK made us lax in our response to Covid-19. We believed we were one of the exceptions, and in a way we were, but in all the worst ways.

The Government was not alone in holding this view. In Cardiff people of Asian heritage reported suffering abuse as a result of the coronavirus. The Premier League footballer Dele Ali issued an apology after mocking an Asian man. It was seen to be (using Trump’s horrible expression) a ‘Chinese virus’. It wasn’t for us, because apparently we are different – exceptional.

Secondly, the apparent revelling in ignorance and disdain for the rules and science. The entire tone of the Prime Minister appeared to be one of nonchalant disdain for the science being presented around a virus which was killing people. There is a growing trend amongst some of our elected officials to actually embrace the perception of ignorance. Like the kids in school who didn’t want to try because then they could be seen as having failed. This troubling trend is more ingrained in parts of US politics but it is also clearly present in the UK. Similarly the reaction to the overwhelming evidence of climate change – utter disinterest with the occasional quip of ‘what happened to global warming?’ when it snows.

Finally was the reaction of the scientist alongside the Prime Minister at the March 3 press conference. Upon hearing a statement that was clearly not conducive to public health, Chief Scientific Officer Sir Patrick Vallance did not attempt to publicly rebuke what was clearly terrible advice. He was instead very diplomatic, looking exasperated and simply saying ‘wash your hands’. From now on scientific experts would regularly flank UK Government Ministers to add their expertise to statements but they too would come in for criticism for becoming a ‘PR wing’ of the government. Perhaps scientists shouldn’t be criticised for not calling out the Prime Minister on national television – they are scientists not politicians. However, there would be legitimate concerns that the lines between the two would blur at times during the upcoming crisis.

As the amount of cases began to increase daily other countries were heading into some form of lockdown, with schools closing and in many places heavy fines for those found to be breaking the restrictions. But in the UK (and it is important to remember at this stage there was a uniform UK-wide approach) things were different. This is when the phrase ‘herd immunity’ became mainstream and would shortly become one of the most fought-over parts of the narrative around the early days of the virus.

The concept of herd immunity is that if enough people are immune to the virus it will break the lines of future transmission, meaning the end of the epidemic. Ideally this is done with a vaccine (which at this point was considered to be at least a year away). Without a vaccine the other option is to allow people to catch the virus while sheltering those most at risk. Speaking on Friday March 13 Patrick Vallance said: “Communities will become immune to it and that’s going to be an important part of controlling this longer term. About 60% is the sort of figure you need to get herd immunity.”10

You don’t need to be an epidemiologist or a doctor to realise the risks of doing this with a new virus. First, this policy will still lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. There are 66 million people in the UK meaning that if you allow 60% infection you are allowing roughly 40 million people to get the virus. At a 1% mortality rate you are allowing 400,000 people to die. This is a greater number than Britain had military dead in World War Two. To put that in a Welsh context it is 18,600 – more than the population of Aberystwyth.

Secondly, there was no concrete evidence that long term immunity was even possible from the virus – this was a new disease and not fully understood. Government advisor and disease modeller Graham Medley advocated the policy on Newsnight on March 12 suggesting that in an ideal world you would put all the vulnerable people in the north of Scotland and everyone else down in Kent to have a ‘nice big epidemic’11. The backlash was immediate and strong. Anthony Costello, professor of health and sustainable development at University College London and a former director of maternal and child health at the WHO, branded the whole idea unethical. Professor Costello tweeted: “Is it ethical to adopt a policy that threatens immediate casualties on the basis of an uncertain future benefit?” This dalliance with herd immunity (which the Government would later deny) was pointed to by many as the reason the UK was slow going into lockdown. While other countries were battening down the hatches and closing schools we were just being told to wash your hands while singing ‘happy birthday’ twice. (‘The Gambler’ by Kenny Rogers was also a popular choice.)

At this stage the UK Government had a four phase plan to respond to Covid: contain, delay, research, mitigate. The contain phase was defined as: detect early cases, follow up close contacts, and prevent the disease taking hold in this country for as long as is reasonably possible. Delay entailed slowing the spread in this country, and if it did take hold, lowering the peak impact and pushing it away from the winter season.

On the 12th the Government announced it was moving out of the ‘contain’ phase into the ‘delay’ phase. The risk level was raised to high, and anyone with symptoms was asked to self-isolate for a week. They abandoned attempts to contact and trace people (they didn’t have the capacity to deal with the number of cases) who may have the virus and instead focussed on ‘flattening the curve’. The idea was that if you could spread the peak of the virus over a longer period, the number of cases at any one time would remain lower and within the NHS’s capacity.

Despite this, still no lockdown was ordered and there was confusion in the messaging coming from Government. Incredibly, with all of this going on, the Wales against Scotland rugby match was still planned to go ahead in Cardiff on March 14. Dr Jenny Harries, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England, said: “In general, those sorts of events and big gatherings are not seen to be something which is going to have a big effect, so we don’t want to disrupt people’s lives.”12 But people were scared and, frankly, desperate to have their lives disrupted and see some leadership on this issue. Two days before the match the other two Six Nations games were cancelled, Wales’ football match against the USA on March 30 was also cancelled, with the Premier League put on hold until at least April. But Health MinisterVaughan Gething said: “There is little medical reason at the moment to ban such events.” People were incredulous. Ireland, a country of 4.83 million, had 43 cases and had just ordered all schools to close. Wales, a county of 3.139 million had 25 cases, had decided to allow 70,000 people to gather in one place. This is not to mention all the social gatherings that would occur in towns and villages acrossWales to watch the match. With just 24 hours to go and up to 20,000 Scots travelling to Cardiff for the match, the game was called off by the Welsh Rugby Union. The Scotland fans were already packed into bars and restaurants in the Welsh capital – the late notice was widely condemned but many were also relieved the decision had been made.

The same day a joint press conference was held by First Minister Mark Drakeford, Health MinisterVaughan Gething and NHS Wales chief executive Andrew Goodall. They announced the suspension of non-urgent outpatient and surgical care in Wales due to the coronavirus outbreak. This would allow staff, beds and other resources to be reallocated in priority areas as emergency service staff prioritised coronavirus. Speaking at the press conference Mr Gething said the estimate by scientists was for 20,000 possible coronavirus deaths in Wales with a maximum figure of 25,000.

Crucially this move would also fast-track placement to carehomes by suspending the protocol which allows a choice of homes. The decision gave the Welsh NHS a head start preparing for the storm that was already stirring but begged the question for many why their cancer consultation had been cancelled when thousands of Scottish rugby fans had been allowed to travel into Wales on the very same day.

If people were incredulous about the rugby match going ahead, they were downright furious when a planned concert by the Stereophonics went ahead over the weekend of Friday, March 14 and Saturday 15. On Saturday evening the band tweeted a picture of a packed Motorpoint Arena in Cardiff city centre with the phrase ‘Cardiffis rockin’!’. People stood shoulder to shoulder like the contents of a vacuum-packed travel case in ways that just weeks later would be unthinkable. Doctors were publicly calling on the band to cancel the gig, with a huge social media backlash labelling them and the people who attended ‘irresponsible’ and ‘selfish’. Many mass gatherings had already been cancelled and legitimate criticism could be levelled at the band. However, it should also be pointed out that other countries had taken the decisions out of the hands of organisers, with governments stepping in to do the right thing. It seems outrageous that important operations (and what operation on the NHS isn’t ultimately important to the person receiving it?) were cancelled to protect the NHS but large gatherings that would directly increase the pressure on the health service were allowed to continue.

On March 16 Wales saw its first death from coronavirus after a 68-year-old with underlying health conditions died at Wrexham Maelor Hospital. This phrase ‘underlying health condition’ became something of a mantra for those still looking to underplay the danger of the virus. Every death that was announced alongside the phrase ‘they had an underlying health condition’ was perceived as being a crumb of comfort by many, as if to say ‘don’t worry, this virus isn’t really dangerous to most of us, these people would have died anyway’ – it was perverse. There were thousands of examples of the kindness and selflessness of humanity during this crisis but the idea that we should take comfort in the fact that this virus would only kill the old and vulnerable showed how quickly we cling to any form of hope in hard times, and was unpleasant to see. It was also monumentally short-sighted. Underlying health condition did not just mean someone was on a ventilator already and the virus finished them off – it applies to people overweight (35.6% of the UK), with diabetes (6%), or asthmatic (12%). What adult over the age of forty does not have some kind of underlying health condition?

March 16 also saw first use of another phrase that would repeatedly come back to haunt many unprepared and slow-to-act governments around the world. In a broadcast, World Health Organisation head Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus lamented the fact that there had not been an urgent enough escalation in testing, isolation and contact tracing, which should be the ‘backbone’ of the global response – ‘Test, test, test’ he demanded.

The next day ‘vulnerable people’ were told to isolate for twelve weeks – this list included pregnant women (as a precaution because the evidence was unclear how they would be affected), those aged over 70 and those under 70 with underlying health conditions (which at this point included everyone eligible for the flu jab on medical grounds). At the same time PatrickVallance was telling the Health Select Committee that under 20,000 deaths would be ‘a good outcome’.13

It was on March 17 that I took my computer and screens home from work. Along with millions of others I was to begin a long battle with wifi, noisy neighbours and back pain as I struggled to work remotely. As I left my desk, neighbour and then Chief Reporter at the Western Mail shouted after me: “See you at the Christmas party!”

On the 20th the Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England Jenny Harries told the UK that “the country has a perfectly adequate supply of PPE” and that supply pressures had now been ‘completely resolved’.14 The falsehood of this statement was clear at the time from anecdotes, borne out by subsequent evidence and mortality rates. It was an example of a growing trend of scientists making statements that appeared more like a Government press release than the scientific assessment of available information.

In what was becoming the norm, the public would gather round the television every day at 5pm to watch the Prime Minister give the latest bulletin on the virus, with a Union Jack backdrop and flanked by scientists (the government would tell you they were following the science at every available opportunity). Each time, the situation and the messaging was more dire and it was becoming increasingly clear from news reports and anecdotes on the frontline that the country was not remotely prepared for what was now happening.

Also on the 20th it was announced that cafés, pubs, bars, clubs, restaurants, gyms, leisure centres, nightclubs, theatres and cinemas must close that night. It gave people the chance for one last night out before the closure. Though it was quieter than usual on the Friday night, Newport in particular saw substantial crowds in some bars, well into the night. Sadly for all those people who had just had their last big piss-up for months, panic buying had left supermarkets with no toilet roll or hand sanitiser.Videos began to surface of NHS staffarriving at supermarkets after shifts to find empty shelves and supermarkets began introducing limits on how much of each product people could buy. The same day the Welsh Government announced it would provide funding to get all homeless people a bed in hotel rooms, student blocks and B&Bs to keep them safe during the crisis. On the one hand this was great, but it also begged the question why this had not been the case all along?

Schools followed next. Established science had long said that the closure of schools was one of the big steps a government could take that would have a meaningful impact on the spread of the virus – but it was not that simple. If children were not in school, they needed looking after. Parents would normally turn to grandparents for childcare but they were likely the people most at risk if they caught the disease. Still, on March 20 all schools in Wales were closed.

As the virus marched on it swiftly became clear that south east Wales around Newport was by far the worst area. On March 21 Wales had 280 cases of the virus, 145 of them were in the Gwent area whilst, in comparison, Powys had only 9.

Most of Western Europe was now in some form of lockdown and yet one had still to be ordered in the UK. There was a resistance from Boris Johnson to dictate to people that they must stay home, with some lingering hope that just strongly suggesting it would be enough. There was a huge amount of goodwill at the time and most people understood the social distancing rules but simple guidance was clearly not going to be enough. People were writing furious Facebook posts accompanied by pictures of rammed parks and busy play areas. One Cardiff doctor called me in despair after driving past a busy Pontcanna fields in the city. He had heard from colleagues what the situation was like in London and knew the storm that was coming. Finally, on March 23 Boris Johnson accepted the inevitable and ordered us to ‘stay home, protect the NHS, save lives’.

2. Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives

March 23 to March 29

Wales’ confirmed Covid-19 cases – 418

Wales deaths – 16

UK confirmed cases – 5,683

UK deaths – 281

“It is still true that many lives will sadly be lost,” said Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he announced the UK going into lockdown. The PM was absolutely correct. From Downing Street, back-dropped by an enormous Union Jack flag, a stately fireplace and polished wooden floors, the PM gravely said that “though huge numbers are complying with the advice to stay home, more is needed. From this evening I must give the British people a very simple instruction – you must stay home.”

The phrase ‘fast moving situation’ is perhaps overused in political journalism (alongside ‘a perfect storm’) but the last week in March was incredibly fast moving.

The key message in the government’s lockdown was that the public should stay at home. It was permissible to go out only to shop for basic necessities, exercise once a day, any medical need, to provide care or to help a vulnerable person (which in two months will become known as the ‘Cummings get out of jail free card’) and travelling to and from work when this cannot be done from home. The PM encouraged people to try to do their grocery shopping online which led to several supermarket websites crashing1.

Life as we knew it was stopped immediately. All those things that simply are life: the school run, young people being educated, meeting friends, weddings, taking your kids to a play area, all halted.

On the same day as the lockdown was announced those still holding on to that common but reprehensible thought, ‘it doesn’t matter it will only affect the elderly’, were brought down to earth when an 18-year-old died of the virus. They were the youngest person to have died so far in the UK2. Sadly this would not be a record that would stand for long.

In the face of the dramatic lockdown announcement it didn’t register that Johnson’s messages to the ‘British people’ would become a flash point and source of frustration to politicians in Cardiff Bay and Hollyrood as the crisis progressed. Though in this speech he was correct in addressing the British people as a whole, the rules of lockdown were decided by the devolved nations3. Though at this time, when nations of the UK were ‘walking in lockstep’ (another phrase to become overused in the following weeks and months), differentiating between English rules and UK rules was not an issue. However in about six weeks, when we have English holiday-makers turning up on rural Welsh beaches this is going to become a problem.

Operation ‘flatten the curve’ was now fully underway across the UK. In a statement the same day Public Health Wales officials said that the virus was now circulating in ‘every part of Wales’4. Cardiff and Vale Health board put out temporary job adverts for what seemed like, every job imaginable. Housekeeping, catering, hospital portering, health care support workers, administration and clerical staff, drivers, allied health professionals and clinical scientists, doctors, nurses and IT experts were all called upon to sign up5. A tough task given that there was hardly a surplus of nurses and doctors before the crisis.

Suddenly sport stadia were no longer cauldrons of competitive atmosphere. Whereas just days before we had been debating whether it was the best move to bring 70,000 rugby fans into the Principality with a closed roof (screw you Eddie Jones, we will shut it if we want), on March 27, less than a week later, plans were announced to turn the iconic pitch into a huge 2,000-bed hospital.

It wasn’t just the Millennium, sorry Principality, that was seeing changes. Llanelli Scarlets handed over the Parc y Scarlets to the Welsh NHS to become a 250 bed field hospital, named Ysbyty Enfys Scarlets with Enfys (rainbow), a reflection of the symbol of hope chosen for the pandemic which was now showing up in windows across the country.

From a Welsh perspective, one of the biggest stories of the first lockdown period was not just how many cases there were, but where they were located. New case figures released on the 23rd confirmed that Gwent was the epicentre of Covid-19 in Wales and had the highest UK rates of the disease outside London. Of the 418 confirmed cases in Wales that day 220 of them were within the Aneurin Bevan Health Board.

Eighty year old Marita Edwards was among them. A retired cleaner and keen golfer, she had gone into Newport’s Royal Gwent hospital for a routine gallbladder operation at the end of February. She caught the disease and according to reports at the time was told she had pneumonia. Three weeks later she died of the virus and was believed to be the first person to die from a hospital-acquired infection of Covid-19.

Marita’s case was significant for several reasons and, in microcosm, illustrated the predictability of the unfolding disaster. She was an early example of the failure to test. For a considerable period she was not tested for the disease. The issue of testing capacity, who to test and when to test is one of the recurring themes of the crisis. What can be measured can be managed. Without testing, how could public health officials possibly be expected to manage the disease?

For almost three weeks, Marita was inside a hospital and could have had coronavirus for most of that time. She was cared for by hospital staff and visited by family. All of whom could have been exposed to the disease. Those staff will have probably also have come into contact with dozens of people over the following days.

It was hugely significant that she caught the disease in hospital. It very quickly became apparent how dangerous hospitals were becoming for sick people. To suggest that we didn’t know that hospitals would be the places most at risk from the virus is laughable. It is the exact location where people who have a severe form of the virus would go and exactly where many people at risk with an underlying health condition would be also.

Marita Edwards’ case was also significant as an early example of how hospitals tried to cope with new situations arising from the virus. According to her son, she was isolated in the last week of her life once there was a suspicion that she had the virus. She was moved to an isolation ward. Her family could only visit wearing masks, gloves and aprons. This was the case all over the country. In the Gwent ICU they actually started using iPads so that people could speak to their family digitally without catching the virus.

It wasn’t recognised at the time, but Marita’s death marked something else, outside her personal experience. Her individual case was reported in the media. In the early part of the pandemic in Wales, because numbers were low, news organisations were able to treat each death as the individual tragedy it was, if the family desired such coverage.

In Marita’s case her son Stuart Loud posted the story on Facebook and spoke in moving radio interviews saying: “If she had not been in hospital she would be still be alive. Clearly there was a coronavirus infection in the hospital which claimed my mum’s life. I sit here, heartbroken by the loss of my beautiful mum. I sat for hours holding her hand and an oxygen mask to her face, as this extremely aggressive killer took control of her. Her death was horrific and a mental picture I can’t forget. Please, please take this virus seriously. I don’t want anyone else to endure what our family is going through. The legacy is an uncertainty about the funeral and tribute she so deserved and my wedding in four weeks, which she was so looking forward to. All because of this virus.”

Marita had a son, daughter and granddaughter. She was going to attend her son’s wedding in a month’s time.

Throughout the crisis, at 2pm every day, Public Health Wales would release the latest figures for confirmed cases and deaths. We would report those figures as soon as they were released. Very quickly we moved from one or two deaths a day to dozens.

It is a tragic quirk of news reporting that as death tolls increase often our feeling of empathy for those who have lost their lives can diminish because we are talking about numbers instead of people. A report that “John Smith, 48, healthy father of three, died after a sudden, heart attack in Caerphilly” is one to which readers will empathise. They may think “I know (or I am!) a person in their late forties” or “I have children, imagine if they were without a dad”. Not to mention that they know where it happened: “Caerphilly? I have been there! My mate Dai is from Caerphilly.”

As the extent of the epidemic grew the victims stopped being Marita Edwards of Gwent and became one of tens or hundreds or thousands reported. The dead became anonymous to the general public, and the public began to feel desensitised. People respond to people, not numbers.

Take the example of illegal migration. Over 27,000 migrants have died at sea trying to get into Europe since 1993. I know, just as any decent person does, that those figures are appalling. I know that every single one of those numbers is a human being. I know they are doing exactly as I would do in their circumstances (though I don’t think I would have half the courage they have).

Yet that figure does not stir a fraction of the emotion in me as one image of two-year-old Alan Kurdi (initially reported as Aylan), facedown in the sand on the Turkish beach at Bodrum. I can still tell you what he was wearing offthe top of my head. Blue shorts, red t-shirt and tiny little shoes. That is a human being. He has a name. He looks like my little cousins and the children I see as I jog round a park. For parents that reaction is going to be a hundred fold more intense.

There is a reason that image conjured up more emotion and calls for change than the figure of 27,000. It is the same reason that George Floyd dying under the knee of an officer sparked global protests more than any dry figures about stop and search ever could – people respond to people.

To return to Marita Edwards, it is really important to remember that, no matter how high the death toll, we are always talking about people. When Chief Scientific Officer Sir PatrickVallance6 told the Health Select Committee just before lockdown that 20,000 deaths or below being ‘a good outcome’, he was talking about 20,000 human beings. When the death toll goes over 40,000 and the Prime Minister says in PMQs that he is proud of the government’s record, remember that is 40,000 human beings, just like Marita Edwards or Alan Kurdi.

In the first few weeks of the lockdown the big story in terms of the Welsh outbreak really was all about the Aneurin Bevan Health Board. So why was Gwent so bad? The definitive answer will have to wait until the inevitable public enquiry and swarms of epidemiologists are able to dig into the data. However there are a few theories.

The theory was put forward by Wales’ Chief Medical Officer Frank Atherton in a press conference on March 26 was that it was close to England7. He suggested that the area’s proximity to the border was an issue although this didn’t explain why it was worse than areas such as Bristol which, on April 9 had 46 cases per 100,000 compared to Newport’s 286.

There was also speculation that it was because of a rugby match. On March 6 there was a game between Newport Gwent Dragons and Italian side Benetton leading some to suggest that it was seeded here from Italy which had far more cases of the virus than elsewhere. However Dr Andrew Freedman, expert in infectious diseases and an honorary consultant physician at Cardiff University School of Medicine, said that given that only 2,000 people attended that game and it was five days after Wales’ first case, it is likely the virus was already spreading in communities.

More light was shed as we neared the end of the month and Gwent had 514 cases (Cardiff andVale had the next highest number on 282). Mark Drakeford said the reason for the spike was a combination of an infected health worker and increased testing. The health worker was diagnosed quite early and was found to have passed the disease on to several colleagues. This in turn led to an increase in testing in the Gwent area, and to more confirmed cases.