Luton has been made an ‘area of intervention’ after seeing a spike in coronavirus cases – meaning long-awaited plans to open indoor gyms and leisure centres for locked-down Britons this weekend have been put on hold.
The council has set up an emergency testing centre at a primary school and is telling locals to stay home as it tries to prevent a further spread of COVID-19.
In Luton, Bedfordshire the rate of cases fell to 24.8 per 100,000 in the week to July 20 from 31.8 per 100,000 in the week to July 13.
But councillors have now said it has agreed with Government officials that gyms, pools and other leisure facilities will not reopen as planned on Saturday.
Public Health England has also upgraded Blackburn with Darwen to an ‘area of intervention’ following an increase in the rate of cases from 49.7 cases per 100,000 in the week to July 13 to 81.9 in the week up to July 20.
Luton Council set up a testing centre at Downside School for local residents today after a rise in the number of Covid-19 cases
The primary school in Luton is being used as a testing centre today and tomorrow for locals
The leader of Blackburn with Darwen Council has said it is ‘sensible not to relax’ lockdown restrictions, as the rate of COVID-19 cases in the borough shot up.
Councillor Mohammed Khan urged the community to ‘keep up the momentum’ in combating the disease as 122 new cases were recorded in the seven days to July 20.
‘We are very grateful to our communities for working with us,’ Mr Khan said.
‘The increase in testing is helping to ensure that we are heading in the right direction with a reduction in positive cases and hospital admissions.
‘We need to keep up the momentum with our strong prevention work so we agree it’s sensible not to relax the easing of restrictions at the moment to stop the spread.’
Mr Khan added that the decision to delay the reopening of council leisure facilities would run alongside new ‘localised prevention measures’.
‘We feel that accelerating our control measures in this way will assist us to move out of having higher COVID rates even faster – we are grateful for the Government’s help in our local plans on this,’ he said.
Hazel Simmons, Luton Council leader, said: ‘Our main priority is to protect Luton and these measures only serve to underline the importance of doing just that. Please pass these important messages on to your family and friends and if you can, stay at home.
‘Fighting coronavirus is everyone’s responsibility. Too many families and friends have lost loved ones and we must do everything we can to ensure more lives aren’t wasted unnecessarily. There has been too much heartache in the town for us to risk further anguish, pain and suffering.’
It comes as NHS Test and Trace chief Baroness Dido Harding said that there were still concerns surrounding northern towns including Blackburn, Bradford and Leicester.
She told the BBC that there were ‘a number of areas in the North West that we are working really closely with’.
‘Other towns and cities on our areas of concern, or areas that are receiving enhanced support, would be places like Blackburn, also Bradford – who we saw increase but have now come down from being in our ‘enhanced support’ category to being in our ‘area of concern’ category,’ she said.
Testing has been ramped up in the town (above), but the government is not expecting a local lockdown, as seen in Leicester earlier this month, to be implemented
Lady Harding added there were particular concerns about coronavirus spreading in South Asian communities in England.
‘We are all learning what makes different communities, different professions, different parts of the country more vulnerable,’ she told the broadcaster.
‘I don’t think there’s a simple answer to say why one place and not another.
‘There are a mix of things – certainly we are seeing a very high prevalence in the South Asian community across the country.’
Public Health England defines such areas as those ‘where there is divergence from the measures in place in the rest of England because of the significance of the spread, with a detailed action plan in place, and local resources augmented with a national support’.
Testing has been ramped up in the town to track who may have come into contact with the disease.
Today an emergency testing centre was set up at Downside Primary School, which will continue to test locals tomorrow.
According to Sky News, the government is not expecting a similar local lockdown scenario to the one seen in Leicester earlier this month.
Luton has emerged as one of the towns where the government’s test and trace programme may have failed locals
Experts say language barriers are one of the main factors behind the low success rates, as many of England’s worst-affected areas have high numbers of residents from black, Asian and ethnic minority (BAME) backgrounds.
Figures released today suggest just 47 per cent of potentially-infected people in the town were contacted by the system since its launch on May 28.
Earlier today it was announced another 53 people have died from coronavirus in the UK, according to the Government, taking the total to 45,554.
The number of people being diagnosed with the disease has surged to 769 from 560 yesterday and one-week low of 445 on Tuesday.
The seven-day average has risen more than 12 per cent compared with last week – from an average 584 per day to 656, and by 15 per cent in two weeks.
