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Council Leader reacts to Tier 4 this Christmas

Home / Blog / Council Leader reacts to Tier 4 this Christmas
21
Dec


Cllr Roger Truelove, leader at the council, said:

“Planning at all levels of government becomes a difficult task when the messages and instructions keep changing so radically.

“At the end of last week, we started to send out letters to all households, further encouraging people to comply with Tier 3 restrictions. And then on Saturday we were catapulted into a hitherto unheard-of Tier 4. I hope those who received a letter will understand that they are now out of date, as are many of our other public notices.

“The Tier 4 is said to have been made necessary by the new variant strain about which we in Swale Council had heard nothing until it was announced by the Health Secretary in parliament. It has hit Kent in particular.

“Sadly, infection rates in Swale continue to rise, though not at the same rate as in other places and we are, now, not referred to as the “number one” in the country. Having said that, the situation is critical, and I can not only implore people to follow the guidelines but, in fact, if possible, go even further than the regulations to try to control the virus.

“We are asked to stay at home, get exercise of course, but only meet one person in an outdoors setting. I went for a walk to a park on Sunday afternoon and I have to say that that message had clearly not registered with most people. Regulations will only bring this virus down if we willingly comply.

“Because of our high rate of infection, asymptomatic testing has been introduced into Swale before other parts of the county in the KCC area of public health administration. This is obviously a good step forward. KCC tell us there will be a testing site in Sittingbourne in the New Year.

“The NHS is also starting a programme of vaccination, using the delicate Pfizer vaccine and we look forward to vaccination being rolled out in the months ahead.

“This is not the sort of Christmas that we want, and we must do our best to look forward to better times, but until then, we must do all we can to save lives. Infection comes from close human contact and so we must wear our masks and socially distance. That is the main way to defeat this virus.”




Comments

Showing comments 1 to 2 of 2

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Thanks for the posting,you are so right we all must follow the rules.But unfortunately we will always have some that think it’s not a rule by law and don’t have to follow it.Fortunately the majority of us will.
Comment by Anne on 23 Dec 2020
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There's only one thing that is going to stop this pandemic and that is the vaccine. Our councillors and KCC should be concentrating solely on this, I appreciate that there are obstacles but these can be overcome as others have already overcome them, lockdowns just deiay the problems and do not solve them. It's the only way out of this, shortage of Doctors/ nurses use our forces,we have the best in the world so use them.
Comment by Ken Newman on 21 Dec 2020
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