One 'relentless' year on from Leicestershire's first Covid case

Since March 2020 there have been 77,000 cases and 2,300 deaths in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

Director of Public Heath for Leicestershire, Mike Sandys told Fosse107 the first case offered a glimpse of what was to come but they did not initially expect it to last a year.

Mike said, "I remember telling Chief Constable Simon Cole that the week after the first case had been the worst week of my working life and I know the next 15 or 16 weeks will be just as bad.

"At that point our planning was based around tradition flu planning where you would have a wave of 16 weeks leading to food and petrol shortages due to staff being off sick, mass burials due to so many people dying.

"Maybe we'd now be talking about a second wave.

"Of course what we'd never considered is a national lockdown...although over 100,000 people have died nationally, lockdowns have been a game changer about how we handle pandemics and have saved lives."

Although the first case is often said to have been confirmed on 7th March 2020, Mike remembers getting the call in the evening of March 6th. 

"Leicestershire being Leicestershire the first case was always going to be a bit different. The first one was not related to travel abroad... they'd walked around unwell for sometime not knowing they had coronavirus.

"We knew fairly quickly that this wasn't going to be containable."

You can hear Mike's thoughts on the first case here:

Although cases are falling, areas of Leicestershire are still seeing case rates above the national average leading some to speculate we could see another local lockdown like last summer.

Andrew Furlong, Medical Director at Leicester’s hospitals, said:

“In recent weeks we’ve seen a slow drop in cases in our hospitals but we are still treating many very poorly patients and our services remain under pressure.

"The amazing NHS vaccination programme is a beacon of hope but now is not the time for people to ease up. It’s so important we all continue to play our part in preventing the spread of the virus. Lives depend on it.”

As of the data released on the 4th March, Leicestershire hospitals and GPs have distributed nearly 350,000 vaccine doses since the programme began in December. You can see more vaccine data here.