Nottinghamshire’s Chief Constable is urging people to do their bit and follow the new restrictions now in place as Coronavirus numbers rise across the city and county.
Chief Constable Craig Guildford has released a video as this week the city and the county were told by the Government that both the city and county were being placed in the new high alert bracket for Covid.
This is the first time the city and the county have been placed in these tighter restrictions and there’s a real potential that there may be even tighter restrictions to come, particularly in the city where the cases are nearly at 1,000 cases per 100,000 population.
This means that Nottingham still has the highest number in England.
Mr Guildford said: “We must therefore all do our bit to make sure we help stem this rising tide and we need to follow the new restrictions. Those restrictions mean that there’s no mixing between households indoors and people should limit how much they use public transport.
“The rules have been updated to be simpler and I think it is fair to say that most people are abiding by the rules, but for the few that aren’t, our enforcement activity will start to increase.
“There will be less encouragement and more enforcement in the coming days should we find ourselves in a position whereby people are blatantly not following the rules. “Over the last two or three days we’ve attended incidents where there have been house parties and also where there have been some student parties.
“It’s important to say that the infection rates are going up over all age categories, but in particular amongst younger adults and we are all determined to protect the NHS. “They quickly got to high capacity at the start of this Covid crisis and I am concerned that we are getting towards that high capacity right now.
“We all have a responsibility to follow the rules. Please take that responsibility seriously.”
The changes will be a new system of local Covid alert levels in which different parts of England will be placed into “medium”, “high” and “very high” alert levels.
Both city and county have been placed into the “high” level of risk category and this came into force on Wednesday. This is the first time the city and county have been put into such restrictions. I anticipate that this will be carefully monitored nationally for the city given the current figures.
Restrictions imposed include no mixing with other households indoors and reducing travel on public transport. The rule of six will still apply to those outdoors, where the risk of the virus spreading is deemed to be lower.
Businesses in the city and county will remain under the same restrictions which are already in place, which includes the 10pm curfew for pubs and bars.Schools and education settings will also remain open across the whole of England, including in the city and county.
For more information on what the new restrictions mean for Nottingham and Nottinghamshire please visit: COVID Alert Levels explained as Nottinghamshire moves to High Alert