The Leaders of all ten councils in Greater Manchester, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham and Deputy Mayor Baroness Bev Hughes have rejected calls for the region to be placed in Tier Three lockdown restrictions

In a statement issued this morning GMCA said the evidence does not currently support it.

The rate of Covid infection in Greater Manchester is much lower, at 357.6 cases per 100,000, compared to Liverpool City Region which is in Tier 3 at 488.0 cases per 100,000.

They also say the hospital admission rate is much lower than in LCR as Deputy CMO, Jonathan Van Tam, highlighted in his press conference this week.

Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust 7-day rolling average Covid patients in beds is at around the 225 mark and in Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust it’s at the 100 mark.

Second, the financial package accompanying Tier 3 is nowhere near sufficient to prevent severe hardship, widespread job losses and business failure.

“At the Prime Minister’s press conference on Monday, the Chief Medical Officer said that Tier 3 measures would only limit the spread if they included much more widespread business closures than the baseline of pubs. However, the Government has not put in a place an economic package to support this level of business closure.

For that reason, we believe the Tier 3 proposal is fundamentally flawed. The Government is placing councils in an invidious position. If councils adopt the CMO’s advice, they will better control the virus but cause substantial economic damage which will take a long time to repair. If they only follow the baseline requirements, they will reduce the harm to the economy but fail to bring down the rate of infection. Neither is an acceptable option and that is why the Tier 3 proposal is unacceptable to us as it stands.”

They continue:

“We therefore reject the Government’s current drive to pile pressure on places to enter Tier 3. We take particular issue with the offer of local control of Test and Trace as an incentive to do so. This should be on offer to all local areas and is more likely to be effective in those areas in Tiers 1 and 2.

If the Government pursues its current strategy, we believe it will leave large parts of the North of England trapped in Tier 3 for much of the winter with all the damage that will do.

If cases continue to rise as predicted, and the Government continues to refuse to provide the substantial economic support that Tier 3 areas will need, then a number of Leaders in Greater Manchester believe a national circuit break, with the required financial support would be a preferable option. This would create the conditions for a re-set of the Test and Trace service into a more locally-controlled operation which, with cases driven down to a lower level, would be more likely to succeed.”

 

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