THE second wave of coronavirus has dramatically catapulted the BCP area up from bottom of the league tables to match the national average.

This has led to consideration of stronger measures to combat the spread of disease.

The local data publicly available is deeply worrying. A five-fold increase in infection rate in just a month, a rate that would put us into lockdown in less than a fortnight were it to continue.

The increase now obviously BCP-wide so not to be dismissed simply as a student problem.

Perhaps most worrying is the reported death toll – eighteen Covid fatalities in less than three weeks which suggests a case mortality rate above the national average.

It also brings into question the statements that the rise in infection rates is “particularly in the 18-30 age range” whose case mortality rate should be pretty-much zero.

Our local MPs and council leadership, all Conservative, appear dismissive of the need for stronger measures and more concerned with resulting economic impacts.

Perhaps they do not grasp that if such measures are inevitable, and this appears the case, the sooner they are implemented the lower the peak infection and mortality, plus the quicker the infection can be brought down and the measures ended.

Nationally, government is making a very poor job of managing coronavirus.

With an apparent gung-ho attitude from local MPs and council leadership, it may well be there is no safe pair of hands locally either.

DR MARTIN RODGER

Bloxworth Road, Parkstone