Treading carefully as he heads to the chemist down a footpath blanketed in snow, Ralph Hale, 73, says he hasn’t been out of the house all week.
That’s not down to the “Beast from the East”, which has brought heavy snow and ice to much of the UK, but because of a far deadlier threat.
This is Newham in East London, in the heart of the UK’s so-called “COVID triangle” where up to half of the population have been infected with the virus and the pressure on hospitals, food banks and funeral homes has reached unprecedented levels. Yet it’s just a stone’s throw from London’s biggest skyscrapers and tourist attractions where Netflix is busily filming its pandemic hits.
It’s been “terrible”, Mr Hale tells news.com.au, whose brother-in-law died after catching COVID-19, “no one can do anything”.
“This is the first time I’ve been out all week,” he adds. ““Everyone’s depressed aren’t they, there’s nothing to look forward to at the moment.
“This used to be a busy thoroughfare, but it’s not anymore.”
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More than 33,000 people have tested positive for the virus in Newham, about 1 in 10 of the population. But modelling by economists at Edge Health indicates that almost 50 per cent of people are likely to have been infected. At least 667 have died.
During the first wave back in April, Newham had some of the highest death rates in the UK.
“It was bad,” care home worker Maxine Wilson tells news.com.au, as she makes her way down the street wearing a plastic visor and disposable plastic gloves. “I was very worried.
“I’ve not been to work from December … because so many of them died, there were less people there.”
Ms Wilson, who works at a home in nearby Dagenham, recently had the vaccine but had to travel to Queen’s Hospital — an hour from her home by public transport — to get it. In recent weeks, patients were being treated in ambulances queuing outside the hospital amid fears that oxygen supplies were running low.
“I miss the clients,” says Ms Wilson, but she’s relieved she doesn’t need to take the bus and train to work right now, as the highly contagious variant sweeps the country.
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‘IT SPREAD VERY FAST’
In mid-January, COVID-19 cases in Newham hit 1,468 per 100,000, with Barking and Dagenham having 1,620.9 people per 100,000 infected and Redbridge completing the triangle with 1,369 people per 100,000. While cases are beginning to fall, experts have issued warnings over the emergence of the even more dangerous South African variant.
“Newham was very, very badly hit in the first wave, it spread very fast,” Jason Strelitz, the area’s director of public health. tells news.com.au. It scores highly for all the risk factors, including a highly dense population, multigenerational households and high numbers of frontline and precarious workers — from hospital workers to retail staff to transport workers.
It also has a 75 per cent black and ethnic minority population, who have been disproportionately affected by the virus in terms of both health and financial security.
There are also signs that ethnic minority populations may be more hesitant to get the vaccine.
“Most black people doesn’t want to take it,” says Ms Wilson, who lives with her daughter and granddaughter as well as her husband, who has cancer and diabetes. “My sister she said she’s going to take it but she’s waiting to see if I’m going to die.
“People are seeing all these things on Facebook and WhatsApp about the virus, so many things it gets to their head and they believe … so when people send me these things I just delete it, I say I don’t care, I’m going to take it.”
Newham’s local authority recently introduced a scheme through which people who are living in crowded housing can stay at hotels.
“It’s incredibly early days,” says Mr Strelitz. He says the council is using this in conjunction with nine rapid test centres so people who cannot work from home can be regularly tested, diagnosed early and given that support to self isolate if needed.
He said it had been “very challenging” that the launch of the vaccination program coincided with the peak of the second wave. About 8 per cent of the area’s residents are now vaccinated and the main focus is now on reducing barriers to access — including transport and language.
‘DETERIORATED’
Newham is one of the poorest areas of London, despite being situated in the shadows of the shining tower blocks of Canary Wharf and glittering Millennium Dome — architectural reminders that the capital’s wealthiest are thriving.
On its outskirts sits the vast ExCeL exhibition centre, which has been repurposed as a giant vaccination facility, but the venue appears quiet and locals say the program has been slow to get off the ground.
“There’s been a lot of lack of communication,” says Jacqui Birkett, a phlebotomy manager at a nearby clinic who has been giving vaccinations at a Westfield.
She said GPs were initially not told they could send patients to the shopping centre, so it had been “really quiet”, although she had been told this was now rectified.
“I feel like no one’s been given much advice,” she added. “I feel like they’ve been a little bit let down because no one knows anything, and they’re just grabbing any information they can.”
She said she thought people were “really worried”, adding: “Newham’s always getting affected unfortunately, which is sad, and I’ve lived here my life.
“I can see it’s definitely deteriorated.”
While the Netflix shows that shoots around the ExCel centre have started filming again, it’s not clear how easily the rest of the area will recover.
Jimmy, who works in entertainment and didn’t want to give his surname, said he lives “in a bit of a glass bubble” close to the river at the Royal Docks. “Last week for example at Millennium Mills they were shooting a major movie, they’re shooting something inside the ExCel, they’re shooting at Barrier Park so there’s loads and loads of film and TV happening at the moment.”
But his theatre business has been “decimated” by the pandemic, he adds, and he had to turn to government support and make redundancies.
“That was really hard,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to recover quickly.”
His business partner, who is about 40 but had underlying conditions he didn’t know about, went into a coma for two weeks last year and nearly died. “I think that hammered it home … suddenly everyone started taking it seriously,” he said.
The latest national UK lockdown, combined with winter, is pushing this area and many like it to breaking point. Mr Strelitz says it is “slowly eating away at the economic resilience of many people” who are grappling with job loss, debt and increasingly turning to government support and food banks. Local stores have been delivering food to people who are too frightened to venture out.
“I was working in another restaurants and they had to let half the staff go,” says cafe worker Vivien Gyulai. “I haven’t seen my boyfriend in two months. We were supposed to move in literally in like two weeks but because we cannot check the houses we can’t.”
Ms Gyulai, who has family in Hungary but cannot get a vaccine because of allergies, says “it’s been a long road.”
“If we had done the first lockdown properly, I think we would be all right now,” she adds.
Vaccinator Ms Birkett says she is trying to stay hopeful, with the centre at Westfield where she works planning to start giving jabs to over-65s.
“I’m trying to see a light at the end of the tunnel and I just want to keep going.”
