Wiltshire Public Health Director shares lockdown memories five years on
Five years ago today, we were all told to stay at home
Wiltshire's Director of Public Health has shared her memories of the first Covid lockdown, five years on from it's announcement.
On 23rd March 2020, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson introduced the first lockdown, telling the country to "stay at home".
Professor Kate Blackburn has told us that she remembers the anxiety the announcement brought, saying she shared many of the concerns among the public.
"My father was in a care home, actually, and he was very frail and paralysed, so I knew he wasn't going to be able to use a phone to FaceTime us. So I really remember myself being very anxious and frightened that I would never see him again," she said.
Professor Blackburn said she also had to manage the pandemic from a professional point of view, telling us she and her team had to figure out how they were to protect the health of the population in the way that worked best for Wiltshire.
She told us the local knowledge of the county was critical in delivering support in the most effective way for a rural county, but there wasn't time to consider the size of the task at hand.
Professor Blackburn said: "Everything was happening so quickly. Guidance was coming out so quickly. Queries were coming in so fast, different parts of our population who didn't quite fit into relevant parts of guidance had to be supported.
"Every single part of the local authority officers came together, did different roles, did roles that they never dreamt that they would be doing because there was such a passion and a dedication to making sure our population was OK," she added.
A vital lockdown lesson has been forgotten
Professor Blackburn said many lessons have been learnt from the pandemic insisting it should never be forgotten how the community pulled together.
"We really must never forget how strong, brave and caring our communities are and how everyone joined together, whether it was in their roles at work or at home, really ensuring that as a county, we really managed to keep the rates of our virus transmission relatively low.
"That doesn't happen by magic, that was absolutely because of the strength in our communities."
She added that the pandemic has helped plans to balance health inequalities across the county and build understanding of the assets and resources available to the Public Health team, as well as where attention needs to be focussed.
However, Professor Blackburn said one important lesson from the lockdowns has been forgotten a little bit.
"I can remember people's hands being really quite sore at the beginning of the pandemic because they weren't used to being washed so much.
"20 seconds after using the toilet, before eating when getting home or when arriving at work, that really does make such a difference in breaking the chain of infection and yet as a country, we do seem to have forgotten that that really simple, cheap and effective method of infection control is still available to us."