The report of the Strategic Director, Place (Document “C”) provides an update on COVID-19 in Bradford District.  It describes the district response between March 2020 and January 2021.  The latest data on cases, admissions and deaths will be reported verbally at the meeting. 

The report sets out how the Bradford District COVID-19 response is being managed, explaining the leadership role of the COVID-19 Management Group and the working groups that feed it.

Recommended –

That Bradford West Area Committee notes the contents of the report and the work that is taking place across district to respond to the Covid 19 pandemic.

(Ian Day – 07896 728186)

The report of the Strategic Director, Place (Document “C”) provided an update on COVID-19 in Bradford District. It described the district response between March 2020 and January 2021. The latest data on cases, admissions and deaths were reported verbally. 

The report further set out how the Bradford District COVID-19 response was being managed, explained the leadership role of the COVID-19 Management Group and the working groups that fed it.

Assistant Director, Neighbourhood and Customer Services was in attendance, accompanied by the Strategic Manager of Employment & Skills and the Consultant in Public Health. At the request of the Chair, a synopsis of the report commenced. The Assistant Director explained that in reference to Section 3.3 in the report, the current public health data changed on a daily basis, hence the reasons for not being able to collate information prior to this committee. In terms of hub working, there were 11 different working groups that undertook work of the hub on a weekly basis. The do focus work of the hubs working groups was driven by a public health Intelligence document. The information contained in this document captured the current infection rates, hospital admissions, deaths, location points of high incidences, high prevalence of infection and the insight data that had been returned from the community engagement work that was discussed at a weekly meeting. In response to the information received, work themes were deployed on the back of recommendations that were contained in that public health data document.

At this point, the Assistant Director gave way for the Consultant’s update. She stated that public health data received this morning showed a slight increase of 208 in comparison to the previous weeks when the city had a 203 infection rate in the over 60 years old population. This was critical in terms of the area in the highest incidence of deaths which was now 132.5 per 100,000 populations. However, this figure in itself was lower than the 210 figure and therefore the impact of the vaccination programme had started to make a positive impact on the rates of infection. Work on home testing and lateral flow testing sites were being run at St. George's Hall and the Airedale Shopping Centre in Keighley, along with the mobile testing units that were run by health partners. Hospital admissions in the last seven days were 135, reduced from 158 from the previous days. The deaths in the district had increased in the last seven days, with a further 40 deaths in the district, an increase from 32 in the week prior. In overall, Bradford stood at 19 in the country out of around 350 cities on the list. Bradford had a stubborn level of continued infection across the district that proved a real challenge in terms of reducing. In terms of the vaccination and perhaps, there was slightly more optimism. 145,000 in the district had been vaccinated, which represented about 30% of the adult eligible population in district to receive a vaccine. The vaccine was now being rolled out to the over 60 s. To add, the following week would be the commencement of the administration of the second dose of the vaccine for people who were first vaccinated a few weeks ago.

The two rapid testing sites, as referred to earlier, St. George's Hall and the Keighley Shopping Centre were seeing in the region of 2,500 people a week. A further 2000 home tests a week were also being undertaken by knocking on people’s houses, in particular, areas of high infection rates. Individuals who were asthmatic were being tested to establish whether they were carrying the infection. To work with businesses across the district was another major focal point which also entailed information gathering and compliance of social distancing rules through the method of mystery shopping by officers. Mystery shopping visits had been received well by businesses. Features of visits entailed So observation of behaviours, and then engaging with business professionals in conversations to assist the safety of its staff and its customers. Broader engagement work had also been undertaken in throughout the whole district to gain further information on particular issues of concern.

In terms of young people, the Council’s Covid support workers were capturing the views of young people across the district, and feeding back intelligence into the hub. This helped guide the policy setting and the direction of work that was taking place. Few days prior to this committee, a video had been produced in consultation with health professionals that answered questions that people had been asking around the vaccine, debunking myths concerning the vaccine. This video would be circulated nationwide

The Assistant Director called forth the Strategic Manager of Employment & Skills to give an update on the recruitment process for the work of Covid and support workers. Recruitment had been undertaken in partnership between Skills House colleagues, Skills Hosts and the Council’s HR team. Recruitment commenced in November 2020 to support the ongoing management response to Covid. From the very outset, the key drive was to ensure that opportunities for support workers were made available to people in district. Opportunities were publicised and published and made available through the Skills, First website and the external recruitment website. 

Recruitment exercise was also channelled through schools, and a range of other partners that that the Council work with in the educational sector including Facebook, Twitter, email distribution lists to different partners. Engagement had been undertaken with volunteers and community sector partners, local faith networks, various free colleges in the district, the University in communities and Jobcentre Plus. This broad exercise was intended to target young people to give them opportunities as well to come in and take advantage of significant support roles that had been advertised. The recruitment process was made accessible as possible. Since December 2020, over 500 job applications had been received, resulting over 250 interviews. This campaign recruited 139 new staff. 

A question and answer session ensued:

·         What information was known on the different variants of the infection?

o   As present circumstances stand, no specific alerts around new variants were received; and,

·         Clarity was sought on reasons for contacting carers to come forward for vaccine during the early stages of the release of the vaccine, yet nothing had transpired following the initial contact?

o   It was known that health professionals were promoting and encouraging co-workers to come forward. It was disappointing to hear that some of the co-workers were struggling to be able to access the systems. However, if members could feed the details of the care workers and assurance would be given f customers right wants to send the details through, I'll make sure that those are fed through to this information could be passed to colleagues in health, to help ensure sure that access to the vaccines be given.

Resolved –

That the information provided in Document C be noted.

LEAD: Assistant Director, Neighbourhoods and Customer Services