Coronavirus York updates; 22nd June 2021

Hospital patients and Deaths

The number of hospital patients continues to trend upwards. However there are no patients in intensive care and there have been no additional deaths

Test results

59 positive test results were announced today. This brings the cumulative total up to 12,967

The number of cases in the City has increased from 189 to 216

The rate /100k population is now 102.56.

Infection rates in York are now higher than the county, regional and national levels.

Neighbourhoods

For the first time since March, we now have a neighbourhood with an infection rate above 200. The area concerned covers the University, Heslington and Fulford (rate currently 229.4). Rates are also high in adjacent “dormitory” areas like Fulford Road and Tang Hall.

We did see a similar exponential growth in cases in the Heslington area in September/October last year. Then the infection rate peaked at 1720. The spike was generally put down to a lack of social distancing by students newly arrived in the City. A lockdown reduced the problem. Although that solution is not available at present, the University authorities are arranging a flash vaccination programme on the campus.

Although it won’t be popular with everyone, we think that the idea of a “COVID passport” may have to be revived. Only those with a double dose vaccination and/or a recent negative test would be allowed into venues where close social contact is possible. Everyone is due to be offered double dose vaccinations before September.

Vaccinations

Updated vaccination stats are not yet available

Tests

  • 5720 PCR test were conducted during the week ending 17th June 2021
  • Of these, 3.6% were positive. That is more than the 3.2% recorded during the previous period
  • 3159 “lateral flow” tests were also conducted on 21st June 2021.

Hob Moor incident – Court decision

The media are reporting that a woman arrested following a disturbing incident on Hob Moor last June has received a suspended prison sentence for the offence.

The woman is understood to have left the City.

101 busy

Meanwhile the police are facing a growing wave of crime reports which is leaving their control room very busy.

Below is the official North Yorkshire Police Online reporting system for those reporting non urgent crime that would prefer to do it this way rather than the 101 telephone reporting system.

https://northyorkshire.police.uk/do-it-online/report-it/

Getting public service standards back to normal?

Slow but noticeable progress this week in getting the backlog of grass cutting reduced.

Some of the grass near to Herman Walk has belatedly been cut
but mixed success on the Thanet Road Sports area

Meanwhile some Councillors have passed on a briefing that they have received about delays in emptying green waste bins. It is a shame that the Council have not been more candid with residents about their problems.

The briefing said,

Week Commencing 14th June 2021

Last week we undertook recovery operations of an evening and on Saturday and all garden waste that was scheduled to be collected on Monday 14th and Tuesday 15th June has been collected.

Garden waste that was outstanding from Wednesday 16th, Thursday 17th and Friday 18th will NOT be collected. Information has been placed on the web pages, at the contact centre and on social media to update this position. Residents have been advised to return their garden waste bins to their property and present them at their next collection. I apologise for any inconvenience caused.

All household waste and recycling (including missed bins were collected last week and on Saturday) and commercial waste collections are also up to date.

Week commencing 21st June 2021

We have a full garden waste service deployed today and for the rest of the week so the service is back to some sort of ‘normality’. Please note that garden waste bins missed on 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th June will be prioritised this week to ensure we collect all of these bins first.

Drivers update

In terms of HGV drivers, we have recently had one driver start with us with a further driver beginning on 5th July. Following our promotion on the radio/web, WWY have received more driver applications and we are hopeful that we will have a further 2 drivers provided to work with CYC (through WWY) in the next fortnight.

It is a shame that similar updates aren’t put on the Councils social media web sites.

We currently don’t know why there is such a backlog of grass cutting or who is making the decisions about what gets cut and when (agreed frequency is a minimum of one every 3 weeks). Some areas haven’t been mowed for 2 months.

Similarly residents are being told when the next application of weed killer will be made to gutters and hard surfaced areas. Weeds are now growing strongly following recent rain.

All in all, the Councils communications unit has proved to be ineffective in getting basic information, about public service standards and issues, across to the people who need the information most.

What’s on in York: “Finding the words”

Thursday 24th June 2021

7:00pm

On line event organised by York Explore Library

Free event. Click to register

Come and listen to some of the best poets from Yorkshire and beyond at Finding the Words, our relaxed and welcoming poetry evening

Finding the Words with Kathryn Bevis, Ellora Sutton and Shash Trevett

Kathryn Bevis is Hampshire Poet 2020-21 and founder of The Writing School Online . Her poems have won several awards, including first prize in the Poets & Players and Against the Grain competitions. Kathryn’s work has been published and anthologised in print and online by: Nine Arches Press, iamb, Live Canon, Words for The Wild, Parthian Books, and The Fenland Poetry Journal. She now designs and delivers online Poetry for Wellbeing courses for adults in substance misuse and mental health settings, and in prisons. Kathryn is working towards her first collection.

Ellora Sutton (she/her) is a queer poet from Hampshire. She has won the Mslexia Poetry Competition, the Poetry Society and Artlyst’s Art to Poetry Award, and the Pre-Raphaelite Society Poetry Competition. Her work has been published by Poetry News, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, amongst others. Her debut chapbook, All the Shades of Grief, was published in 2020 by Nightingale & Sparrow, and for the first three months of 2021 she enjoyed being poet in residence at Jane Austen’s House. She tweets @ellora_sutton, or you can find her at ellorasutton.com.

Shash Trevett is a Tamil from Sri Lanka who came to the UK to escape the civil war. She is a poet and a translator of Tamil poetry into English. She has collaborated with artists and composers and is a winner of a Northern Writers’ Award. Her pamphlet From a Borrowed Land will be published in May 2021 by Smith|Doorstop. She is currently co-editing (with Vidyan Ravinthiran and Seni Seneviratne) an anthology of Tamil, English and Sinhala poetry from Sri Lanka and its diaspora communities. Shash was the 2019 Apprentice Poet in Residence at Ilkley Literature Festival and is a 2021 Visible Communities Translator in Residence at the National Centre for Writing. She is a 2021 Ledbury Critic and a Board Member of Modern Poetry in Translation.