Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham will host a remote press conference following the weekly Greater Manchester COVID-19 Emergency Committee.
The Mayor will be joined remotely by Cllr Elise Wilson, Economy lead for Greater Manchester, and Cllr Sean Fielding, lead member for the Education, Skills, Work, Apprenticeships and Digital portfolio, to discuss the latest on Greater Manchester’s response to the impact of the current coronavirus outbreak.
Andy Burnham begins the conference by saying that the cases of Covid-19 across Greater Manchester appears to be levelling off.
287 care homes in the region have issued alerts, that is 30 more than the previous week.
1310 homeless people have been supported by the homeless scheme-There are a significant amount of new people coming onto the streets and it is clear that this crisis is creating more homeless people
The Mayor says that he understands that Government money is arriving later today for Metrolink but he believes that it won’t cover the losses that the network is incurring.
There is, he adds confusing signals around testing.It seems, he says, that the Government is chasing capacity without consulting locally on where it is needed.
Andy is answering questions now from the press
He believes that care homes were neglected early on in the crisis and that the advice to move people out of hospitals into care homes at the start of the crisis without a testing regime.
There is much debate around the wearing of masks. The Mayor says that he wants clear guidance quickly from Public Health England on the wearing of masks on public transport.
He is asking for a conversation with the public.On Metrolink he says that without the wearing of masks, each carriage could carry just twenty people.That would rise to 75 if PPE was worn.
