Today The Hinckley Times have printed my letter to the Editor. If you haven't had a chance to read it you can do so below:
As both your Member of Parliament for Bosworth and a GP I hope you shall give me the platform to raise awareness of the implications of Coronavirus here in Hinckley and Bosworth, and the importance of social distancing, self-isolation and shielding.
I am very proud to be working alongside Cllr Stuart Bray, the Liberal Democrat Leader of Hinckley & Bosworth Borough Council, and councillors from all political parties to do what we can to limit the effects of this virus.
Coronavirus is an exceptionally infectious virus.
Under normal circumstances each carrier of winter flu will transmit it to 1.4 other people, over a period of 30 days and 10 iterations that single person will be responsible for transmitting the virus to around 14 other people in total.
Coronavirus is an altogether different beast.
Without any measures in place to minimise infection that same 1 person with Coronavirus would transmit it to 3 other people and over the same 30 day period with 10 iterations that single person would responsible for passing Coronavirus to 59,000 others.
In short, without measures, the whole of Hinckley and Bosworth would become infected in little over 1 month. Without mitigation hundreds of people in this constituency alone will die. Not one single town or village would be left untouched.
That is why the Government has had to adopt what are draconian measures to keep us as safe as possible by trying to put in place enough backstops to allow our precious NHS the capacity to manage.
Both Social Distancing – the idea that all of us should be keeping 2 metres away from each other and avoiding all non-essential contact; and, self-isolation – you and your family immediately returning home and staying there for 14 days if just one of you display symptoms (cough/fever), are essential in limiting the transmission of this horrible virus.
The first two steps saves the lives of the third group “Shielding”.
Shielding – asking older people and the medically vulnerable to remain in home for 12 weeks could not be more important.
These unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures.
We know that the timings show that the UK is approximately two weeks behind the infection and mortality rate of Italy; and we know that Hinckley and Bosworth is lagging behind London, the epicentre of the virus here in the UK.
I’m calling on every resident here in my constituency to strictly obey the rules around social distancing, self-isolation and shielding.
I choose my words carefully: if you don’t you could kill members of your family, friends and those most vulnerable in our community.
Stay home. Save lives.
Dr Luke Evans MP