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In Fazakerley, one of Liverpool’s most deprived neighborhoods, community worker Maureen Delahunty-Kehoe and a group of volunteers are busy unloading a delivery of new clothing to distribute to the homeless, local schools and others in need.
The local food bank, also run from the local community center, has helped hundreds of families stay afloat during the first shutdown and are now stocking up as they prepare for the second wave.
The Liverpool City Region was the first place in England to be placed at the very high risk level on Wednesday.
Across the region, bars and pubs that do not serve meals have been forced to close and home mixing has been banned.
Community center shelves are well stocked
Maureen is looking forward to the next few months. And she is right to be. Liverpool has the third highest number of COVID-19 hospital admissions in Europe, and more than 95% of the city’s intensive care beds are occupied.
“It’s scary, I almost lost my dad to this and it’s pretty scary. The way people will come out of this are different extremes. Some people will be greatly affected by this, some people have buried people,” he tells me as we chat between boxes of cereal and cans of Coke in the well-stocked food bank at the community center.
“It’s scary to think that we don’t have it under control, that we don’t have the proper measures.”
There is concern among these volunteers about the track and trace system and skepticism that the latest round of restrictions will work if they apply beyond their own patch.
There is also dismay at the lack of an exit plan from our current COVID-19 situation.
Volunteers here are most drawn to a circuit breaker plan, adopted this week by Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer – developed by the government’s own scientific advisers.
“We need to get into a total lockdown,” volunteer Dave Kelly tells me. “Not Liverpool, not Merseyside, not the Liverpool city region, we have to shut down the whole country.
“Unfortunately, I think the vast majority of Liverpool will probably think that the government is more concerned with protecting the economy than its citizens.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself says he is trying to navigate a narrow path between the “social and economic trauma of the total lockdown and the massive human and indeed economic cost of an irrepressible epidemic.”
He hopes his regional approach to local lockdowns will protect the economy.
The obvious risk is the way it divides the country and divides communities between those trapped in confinement and those still relatively free.
The people I spoke to in Liverpool feel aggrieved.
It fuels suspicion in this Labor stronghold that the Conservative government is leaving them behind.
The decisions being made in Westminster are having a real life-changing impact for millions of people living across the North, from Rochdale to Liverpool, Wigan to Leeds.
On Thursday, millions more people in this part of the world could find their lives changed again as the government weighs whether to place Greater Manchester and Lancashire at Level 3.
The food bank is managed from a local community center,
Local leaders led by Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham are fighting this, arguing that their businesses and local communities need more financial support.
“We are not going to give in. They will have to impose it,” Burnham said Wednesday.
Local leaders are having a call with Number 10 on Thursday morning to discuss the situation on the ground, although government figures told me Wednesday night that no decisions had been made on moving Greater Manchester and Lancashire to the level. higher.
The numbers are “bad” and action is needed, so a government figure told me. Ministers want to bring regional leaders with them, but not at any cost.
Decisions must be made as the divisions between Westminster and cities across the UK sit more sharply.
At the beginning of the year we were all together, but now we are separating more and more.
Ours is now a divided country, not only on how best to beat the second wave, but also on how we are forced to live.
