Government PR offensive cannot hide NHS crisis

It’s time for the Government to take meaningful action – e.g. introduce mandatory mask-wearing in enclosed public places and on public transport.

Cornwall’s hospitals chiefs have cancelled all elective and emergency surgery in response to these exceptional covid pressures. This follows the announcement last month that the hospitals trust has undertaken a drastic reconfiguration of services across the Trust’s hospitals in view of “exceptional pressures”.

The worsening situation is an inevitable result of the Government’s irresponsible handling of covid. Pursuing populism rather than science. Other countries with far better covid records have opened up their economies but maintained sensible restrictions. However, the UK adopted a cavalier attitude. It wasn’t just that the G7 summit proved to be the superspreader event many of us warned, but that lax measures have resulted in a worsening of covid caseload and an avoidably higher death rate, in contrast to similar countries; Germany, France.

The Government’s “Enhanced response package” announced for Cornwall a fortnight ago proved to be just warm words and enhanced comms.

I’m a councillor on Cornwall’s health scrutiny committee. Found out about this via the local media. Received the same statement as sent to the media afterwards. I regret to have discovered the scrutiny committee to be disappointingly toothless, to operate at ponderous pace and that it seems to be a puppet of the executive and Government supporters. I’ll of course continue to do all I can within the limitations of this committee. But I’m not optimistic that it has the capacity nor the desire to properly scrutinise anything politically contentious, nor why our NHS has found itself in this completely unacceptable situation.