This article was written by Damian and published in this week's Herald editions and Petersfield Post:
"The new Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, brings an enormous amount of experience and credibility to this critical position, one of the toughest jobs in government.
The change in minister does not change the challenge we face in this pandemic, nor the focus on determining how we can live with the virus in the most sustainable way in the future.
Almost 18 months on, there is now much more we know about the virus – how to identify and track it, how to reduce transmission, how to treat it and how to protect people.
We know the current vaccines are breaking the link between infection and hospitalisations and death, and vaccinating more people is vital to enabling more of normal life to return.
But we don’t know how the virus will evolve or how significant future variants will be, or how effective the vaccines will be over time. Zooming in on these questions – what Donald Rumsfeld would call the ‘known unknowns’ - is key.
It drives us to plan, prepare and prioritise; to create capacity to find and analyse new mutations, to develop new vaccines quickly, and to work collaboratively with partners worldwide.
The recent review of international travel restrictions has meant changes to the red, amber and green lists, in line with country level data on infection rates, vaccination rollout and evidence of variants of concern.
The approach is cautious, but in line with the overall ambition to ensure as many people as possible are vaccinated before the final easing of restrictions.
The evidence of the protection afforded by having both doses of a vaccine is exceptional, and the Transport Secretary has announced the intention to enable those who are fully vaccinated not to have to quarantine when travelling from amber list countries.
The expectation is that this will happen in phases from later in the summer, starting with UK residents. There will still be a requirement for a pre departure test and another on or before day 2, but the guidance that people should not travel to amber countries will also be removed.
The vaccination programme has been boosted this week with the launch of larger scale walk-in centres, enabling anyone over 18 to turn up and ‘grab a jab’.
The national NHS and local GP-led services (by invitation and bookable online), continue to work well here in East Hampshire, but to find a walk-in centre, go to nhs.uk and search on ‘walk in’.
Also new this week has been the publication of the initial findings from the first phase of the Event Research Programme, involving 58,000 participants at a range of venues across the country.
The results are encouraging, and include important learning points for the reopening of settings across multiple sectors, many of which have remained closed throughout the pandemic.
News of rising cases in Africa and more lockdowns in places like Australia remind us that the world is far from through this, but all current efforts here remain focused on easing restrictions in the safest and most sustainable way possible.
There is growing confidence for the move to Step 4 of the Roadmap, and hopefully the start of a ‘new normal’ for us all, not too far from the old normal."
