West Midland’s Combined Authority deputy leader Brigid Jones has announced 500 council staff have been redeployed to its “drop and collect” testing service. Military personnel could soon be drafted in to help with the scheme, the council said. There has been an increase in admissions to hospitals for those infected with coronavirus in the region.
Over the past week, there has been a “high but stable” admission rate to local hospitals.
Data suggests there has been a rise in cases among those aged 20-40.
At a council meeting on Friday Ms Jones stated that staff had been deployed to go door to door in high-risk areas to dispense testing kits.
The kits were given to all residents regardless of whether they had symptoms or not.
She told the meeting that a request for help from the military had been sent.
She said: “We have been in talks with the military about them giving us some extra capacity for drop-and-collect.
“It’s very much in an extra capacity, feet-on-the-ground sense.
“It’s literally just to support the civilian effort side of things and we’ll be in a position next week to confirm whether or not they will be providing extra capacity and how that might be working.”
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Explaining the reason for conducting a door to door scheme, Ms Jones said: “We are doing it because these are areas where there are very high levels of Covid and we believe there may be asymptomatic people and other people in the community who haven’t accessed tests.
“We are two weeks into intervention in Birmingham, where we have been asking households not to mix in gardens and homes because those are still the areas where we think we are getting the most cases from, followed by workplaces where social distancing isn’t being observed properly.”
Ms Jones added: “Our plea to residents would be, if one of our staff knocks on your door, please take up the opportunity to take a test.”
Assistant police and crime commissioner Waheed Saleem told the council meeting: “Since September 20 we have received over 1,000 calls, about 200 on average a day, on Covid breaches.
“These included illegal gatherings and other minor breaches that have been happening.”
Now West Midlands Police are asking people to report if they observe others breaching coronavirus regulations.
They have requested that people should call the police if they witness any large illegal gatherings.
West Midland’s Police temporary Assistant Chief Constable Claire Bell said: “We are finding there are a small minority that are repeatedly willfully flouting the rules.”
As of Saturday the 26th of September there have been 429,277 total confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK.
