Health staff are 'learning every day' in fight against Covid, Wakefield's director of public health says

It’s been a busy twelve months for Ms Hartley, who admits that, despite almost a decade of training for her role, she never expected to lead a public health department through a global pandemic.

“From when you start your training you’re trained to expect a pandemic,” she said. “And of course there’s plans in place.

“We had a taste of it with Swine Flu, but certainly we never expected anything of this magnitude.

“You have that sense of being part of something bigger than yourself.

“It’s been an incredibly challenging year and I guess some of the challenges have been the fact that the environment has constantly changed.

“What we’ve learned about the virus has changed, guidance has changed and our infection rates have gone up and down quite a lot.

“Normally as a director of public health you’re working with a disease you know inside out and back to front.

“But with Covid we’ve been learning every day.”

Ms Hartley, 45, likens the district’s virus response to an ecosystem, with teams of hundreds of council staff, NHS workers, volunteers and more doing their part to keep the system running smoothly through the pandemic.

Though the system is currently running fairly smoothly, she says it was struggling in the weeks before Christmas, and will do so again if the district's cases rise any higher.

She said: “Back in November things were really tough in Wakefield. Things have improved, but we just can’t go back to that place again.

“We need the NHS to be in a place where if any one of us is sick from anything, if you have a stroke or a heart attack or your child breaks their leg, it will be there.

“We need the NHS to be able to respond to that.

“If we have Covid patients taking up half the beds in a hospital, then the system starts getting backed up.

“People in ambulances outside or in A&E can’t move into beds. That’s how you end up with ambulances backed up in the car park.

“If your mum has a stroke that day and it takes longer for an ambulance to reach you because of the system, then that will impact on your level of care.

“The health services have responded incredibly well, but we can’t go back to how we were in November.”

The rollout of the new Covid-19 vaccines in the district is a step in the right direction, Ms Hartley says, but a significant effort is still needed to prevent cases rising and more pressure being placed on health services in the district.

She said: “We know that the lockdown we had in November did significantly help. The Tiers didn’t really do a right lot, and we can see from Christmas mixing that that’s gone up again.

“With the new variant we need to be particularly careful. We do have the new variant here, but it’s nothing like the numbers down south. In London, even Tier 4 wasn’t able to stop it spreading.

“We have the opportunity to close the door before the horse has bolted.

“If we all pull together and stick rigidly to the guidance and do stay at home we will hopefully get through the next few months and start coming out of the other side.

“But if people don’t adhere and those numbers start going up and the new variant takes hold, that will have a massive impact on the system.

“Every contact you have could potentially be a mechanism to pass the virus along.”

Ms Hartley also applauded the incredible efforts of hundreds of volunteers who have supported vulnerable families through the national pandemic.

Dozens of local groups sprung up in the days following the announcement of the first national lockdown, with volunteers and staff across the district offering to deliver food, medications and essential supplies to those who were unable to leave their homes.

Ms Hartley said: “The thing about Covid is that it has been awful, but we’ve seen people coming together in ways we’ve never seen before.

“People are incredible, aren’t they? Often you expect when people are having tough times they’ll only think about themselves and their families, but so many people do the opposite.”

As the vaccine rollout begins, with a new, large-scale vaccination centre expected to open in the city centre in the coming weeks, Ms Hartley says the goodwill of the district’s health workers has not stopped.

“I know that we’ve had really good vaccine takeup in Wakefield,” she said. “We’re the first place in West Yorkshire to be opening a community site.

“It’s the biggest vaccination programme of its kind ever, so it has been phenomenal to see how quickly it’s been rolled out and how everyone just rolled their sleeves up and got on with it.

“It’s great to see all that happening.”