From: “Matthews, Paul” <[email protected]> Subject: COVID19 21 March
It has been another full on day starting for many around 6:30 and still going now.
- Our education colleagues have been phenomenal today. Our 9 hubs are good to go for Monday. To achieve this in 36 hours is frankly amazing. Circa 659 children have registered to attend. We are emphasising that this is provision of last resort. Children are better off at home if at all possible
- Cases in Wales have escalated dramatically today (45%). We now have 5 deaths and Gwent has more cases than any other region. We are right in this fight now; it couldn’t be more real.
- I spoke to the CEO of Aneurin Bevan tonight. She asked that I pass on the gratitude of all of her staff for what you are doing.
- The new Grange Hospital is being brought forward. 350 beds will open up by the end of April. These will be needed.
- Social distancing does not seem to be holding everywhere. We didn’t want to hear about 1,000’s climbing Pen-Y-Fan today or tens of thousands at Porthcawl. I suspect that if the population doesn’t get itself into gear we will see much more draconian enforcement within days.
- We are expecting a significant delivery of Personal Protective Equipment on Monday which is much needed.
- We dealt with 100’s of individual questions today.
- Our social media channels have been red-hot. The public are with us, they trust what we are doing; we have to hold this.
- Contact Centre will be very busy on Monday. Council Tax bills landed today. Many are fearful of paying these so we will need to agree individual approaches.
- We have our lots of stuff on our web-site today to help businesses understand what is going on for them. We will continue to build this.
- It’s Mother’s Day tomorrow. If your Mum is 70+ or has underlying health conditions she should now be in self isolation. I’m really sorry but you need to phone / FaceTime / Skype but think twice about a visit – you will out her at risk.
Colleagues your actions will save lives and we have to keep at it. There will be more big UK GOVERNMENT announcements in the early part of next week that we will have to respond to and we will.