It was heartening and quite a comfort to see just how far Cheshire has improved in the battle against coronavirus.

All those months of lockdown, working from home and a monumental effort by the NHS to vaccinate masses of people seem to have finally paid off…for the time being at least.

I base this statement on the news that there are just 17 coronavirus patients in the whole of Cheshire, with one at the Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and 16 being cared for by the Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

And at the time the report was published, not one of the 17 patients was in such a bad condition they needed to be ventilated.

And in fact, both the Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and the East Cheshire NHS Trust have absolutely no Covid-19 patients in their hospitals.

Just think back to the peak of the second wave of the pandemic over winter when Cheshire hospitals were seeing up to 500 admissions per month.

As the vaccine programme picked up speed and as lockdown restrictions began to take effect, infection rates across Cheshire have continued to decline with a result that the number of hospital admissions with the virus have fallen as a result.

In more good news, the four local authority areas in Cheshire have recorded a weekly coronavirus infection rate of fewer than 20 cases per 100,000 people.

At the time of writing, Halton had the highest incidence of Covid-19 with a rate of 18.5 (per 100,00 people) in the seven days to May 9, with Cheshire East next on 15.4 followed by Warrington on 13.3 and Cheshire West and Chester on 12.8.

All well and good then. Or is it?

Just as we entered Step 3 on the Government’s so-called ‘roadmap out of lockdown’, the spectre of Indian variant officially known as B.1.617.2 reared its head.

There are actually three variants to have emerged from the Sub Continent as Covid-19 ripped through the country with devastating effect but it’s B.1.617.2 that’s causing the problem.

It has been designated a “variant of concern” by Public Health England (PHE) as it is thought to be at least as transmissible as the Kent variant which is currently the dominant strain in the UK.

But as cases of the Indian variant spiked in Bolton, Blackburn and Sefton – all too close to us here in Cheshire for my liking – dark warnings have started to emerge that it may be 50 or even 60 per cent more transmissible than previous variants. And that would be disastrous. 

Hopefully (if there is any hope in all of this) is that PHE has said there is currently no evidence to suggest the Indian variant is more serious than previous mutations, neither is there evidence (yet) that indicates that this variant is resistant to current vaccines.

Health experts said they ‘haven’t seen any hint’ of a current Covid variant that can fully evade the effectiveness of vaccines.

To some extent, this seems to be borne out by the incidence of cases emerging from Bolton where most of the newly infected seem to be younger and unvaccinated while over-60s, most of whom have had their jabs, seem to be dodging it.

But the fact remains the Government is very much to blame for all this. It had its chance to deal with the Indian variant and, not for the first time, messed it up.

Boris Johnson and his pals knew there were problems with the situation in South Asia as long ago as the end of March when cases of B.1.617.2 were first identified in travellers returning from India.

By April 2, it was clear there were significant problems, so much so that the UK added India’s neighbours, Pakistan and Bangladesh to the travel Red List. 

But even as we all watched the horrors of an overwhelmed Indian health system failing to cope as the number of coronavirus cases – and deaths – began to soar, Boris Johnson refused to add India to the ‘Red List’.
Why was this, you may ask. Well the answer seems pretty straightforward.

The PM was due to fly to India at the end of April to start negotiations on a trade deal, probably the most important one for the Government after America put UK trade talks on the back burner when Joe Biden became president.

Johnson, it seems, was desperate to beat the EU to a deal with India and as a result he elected to put a post-Brexit deal ahead of the health and wellbeing of the country.

In any event, the trip was called off on April 19, the same day health secretary Matt Hancock announced India was going on the Red List – but the travel ban only came into effect three and a half days after the announcement.

And what did we get during that three-day window? 

We got a massive spike in the number of travellers returning to the UK, and a resultant spike in cases of the variant that were subsequently seeded into the community.

If B.1.617.2 does, in fact become a more transmissible dominant strain that threatens our new-found freedoms and even puts in jeopardy the end of all restrictions on June 21, remember who is responsible.

Yet again, this Government has done too little, too late for populist political reasons.

Frankly, we deserve better than this dither and delay.

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