‘We do not want to end up like Leicester’: Blackburn holds its breath after spike in Covid-19 cases

Leicester may have been the first, but it was never going to be the last. After a recent spike in Covid-19 infections, Blackburn with Darwen has become the second local authority to have taken preventative action and tighten certain restrictions as the country continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic.

The Lancashire council has not gone as far as its East Midlands counterpart in imposing a lockdown – residents have instead been told to limit the number of people they accept into their homes, and to wear face coverings in all enclosed public spaces – but the leaders and people of this northwestern region know what is waiting around the corner.

“We do not want to end up like Leicester,” councillor Paul Marrow tells The Independent. “It’s all about being proactive, which is the approach we’ve taken.”

For now, the resurgence of the virus in these parts appears small by comparison. Whereas Leicester recorded roughly 155 cases per 100,000 people prior to its lockdown, Blackburn with Darwen has, to date, reported a peak rate of 47 infections per 100,000. But all fires start from a single spark – and authorities here are doing what they can to put out the growing flames.

Focus has turned to the danger of household transmission across Blackburn and its neighbouring towns. Unlike in Leicester – where officials have struggled to pinpoint the source of the city’s outbreak – local health authorities for Blackburn with Darwen have managed to develop a clear picture of the way in which the disease has spread within the region.

“It seems to be household clusters where a person who has been infected may not know it, they may be asymptotic; they return home and then pass it on to four or five family members,” Denise Park, chief executive of the local council, said.

“We do have a higher than average number of large households – five or more people – so we’ve been looking at that. The most recent data testing shows that the majority of cases are from our south Asian heritage communities.”

Around a third of Blackburn with Darwen’s 148,000 population are from ethnic backgrounds, with a large Pakistani and Indian heritage population, and according to Professor Dominic Harrison, the council’s director of public health, 97 of the 114 cases recorded across the past two weeks derive from these minority groups.

To help protect these communities, and prevent the situation from escalating across the region, authorities have tailored their measures accordingly, telling people they can now only accept two visitors into their homes beyond their immediate families.

“With it being household transmission, we didn’t think a Leicester-styled lockdown was the right answer,” explains Ms Park. “It’s about being targeted with the action we take.”

The response of Prof Harrison and his team has so far been met with positivity and optimism, on account of its specified and proactive nature.

“Dominic Harrison has been absolutely on the ball with Covid-19 and he’s doing his job very well, keeping a good eye on the local community,” Gabriel Scally, a member of the Independent Sage board and professor of public health at the University of Bristol, said.

“I think the council is handling it extremely well. This is the sort of approach that will work well nationally, because it’s generated by the local community, their representatives and the director of public health – trusted figures that the people can be sure they’re acting in the interest of the towns and the population.”

Health secretary Matt Hancock has meanwhile said the council was doing “a fantastic job”. “We’ve gone in and are supporting them, working with them, for instance [to] put in much more testing. And then they’ve taken these steps locally and I applaud that,” he said. “This is exactly the sort of local action we want to see.”

It’s rare praise in these troubling and divided times, when the overwhelming narrative of the Covid-19 pandemic has been one of chaos and confusion. And there’s certainly hope to believe that the strategy adopted by Blackburn with Darwen proves effective.

Leaning on the side of caution, authorities have announced that the current measures – which also recommend against hugs and handshakes – will be in place for four weeks before the council considers easing them. In the meantime the region’s caseload is expected to rise due to increased testing, says Ms Park, but after that it’s hoped the numbers will drop again.

And thankfully, access to data has not proved an issue, as was the case with Leicester. Ms Park said that the information provided by the local government to Prof Harrison has contained details on ethnicity, postcodes and ages, ensuring authorities have the means to develop a more comprehensive understanding of what’s going on in and around Blackburn.

Additional testing units have been deployed in the local community, allowing more people who are carrying the disease but not displaying symptoms to get easily tested. “Let’s not wait till people have got symptoms,” says Ms Park. “Let’s do asymptomatic testing, do some case finding and then say to people they need to isolate.”

Equally, the council has said that footways in the centre of Blackburn will be widened, to further promote social distancing, while some parking bays will be removed to help separate people queueing for takeaways and pubs. Council workers have meanwhile been visiting local religious and community centres to spread the message, and providing advice to smaller shops as to how they can protect their customers.

Still, for all the encouraging work of the council, and the sense of “stoicism” that it has drawn from the local population, as Mr Marrow put its, the situation in Blackburn and Darwen has not passed by without the dangerous, racist rhetoric which marked many conversations concerning Leicester and its outbreak.

“The danger is people see the data and say it’s one section of society to blame, and that is absolutely not what we’re saying,” councillor Saima Afzal said. “There are are a cocktail of factors at play here.

“We are aware there are problems in the south Asian wards but I want to make it clear that they are not less or more likely to follow the rules. That’s not what my experience shows. From what I’ve seen and images I’ve been sent, there are groups gathering from a whole range of backgrounds.”

She warned against analysing the statistics inaccurately as “they can be twisted any way you want to portray them”.

Against this backdrop of tension, Blackburn with Darwen holds its breath as it takes another step into the unknown. Lessons have clearly been learnt from the Leicester episode, with the Lancashire council well poised to fight the virus, but there’s still a long way to go for the region.