Aberdeen’s physical distancing measures are likely to be needed until the summer, the deputy director of public health at NHS Grampian has warned.
Chris Littlejohn told councillors the Spaces For People work across the city should remain in place until scientists are able to have a better idea of how well the vaccination programme reduces the spread of Covid.
Forcing the busiest stretch of Union Street shut, as well as introducing one-way systems in the city centre, Rosemount and George Street – and affecting Victoria Road in Torry too – the distancing measures proved controversial as they were rolled out at pace last year.
In October, councillors on the city growth and resources committee asked officials to come back with a plan for removing all of the £1.76 million interventions, funded by a Scottish Government grant.
They had ruled to rip up weeks-old cycle lanes along the beach front, but wanted more information about the impact of the city works before removing them.
That prospect was not seriously considered at their latest meeting, as Mr Littlejohn outlined the state of the pandemic in the north-east.
City traders last week told The P&J of their dismay the removed of measures was unlikely to move forward.
But others accepted it was too soon to remove the cones, barriers and wooden benches, despite the impact it might be having on their business.
For a public health perspective, Mr Littlejohn said the right thing to do was clear, telling councillors: “Explicitly, NHS Grampian full supports maintaining the protective measures and the Spaces For People programme.
“Things are moving the right direction, we are not there yet but we are in a much better place than the first wave due to much better testing and the vaccination programme – but we can’t lower our guard and make assumptions.
“Let me frame this is a positive, optimistic way: my hope is by summer we should have a much firmer sense of the protective nature the vaccine programme is.”
Reasons for optimism
Mr Littlejohn added: “We are now back at somewhere around 40 cases per 100,000 (of the population) and, to put that in context, when we were at the peak we were at around 150 per 100,000.
“So we have had quite a dramatic decline in incidents as a result of the current lockdown and Aberdeen is certainly showing as much of a decline as anywhere else.
“Cases have really come down and there is no reason for us to expect over the next couple of weeks for it not to come down further.
“We are probably back at the level of new cases being detected every day that we were at probably in October or November time last year.”