Borough reflects on year since first Covid case

Borough reflects on year since first Covid case

With today (Monday March 1) marking a year since the first case of COVID-19 was discovered in Bury, a new film has launched reflecting on the borough’s pandemic response.

With an introduction by Bury Mayor Cllr Tim Pickstone and featuring interviews with borough leaders, the short video has been collated using footage filmed throughout the year.

It shows:

• The response of the NHS in dealing with the emergency situation and continuing to provide care throughout our communities
• How key workers like carers, early years and education staff and food service workers have come to the fore
• The borough’s ‘best in class’ public health response and vaccination programme
• Bury’s plans to build back better.

And the theme at the heart of the film is how Bury’s communities have come together at the most difficult of times.

Cllr Pickstone said: “Like everyone in those early days I would watch the news, hoping that the experts had somehow got it wrong and things could return quickly to normal.

“But people began to fall seriously ill, and to date we have lost more than 500 Bury people to COVID-19. I look back on those first weeks of lockdown and reflect on how terrible and truly frightening they were.

“Yet even in the darkest of times, there has been light. Light that has been provided by an incredible and heartening community response that has got us through this year.

“Hundreds of volunteers have helped in community hubs, and filled all sorts of other vital roles in the borough to support the NHS and care and other public services.

“And all over the borough neighbours looked after one another, community groups stepped up to provide welfare, we got together online and socially distanced finding safe ways to be together.”

Cllr Eamonn O’Brien, Leader of Bury Council, added: Over the past few weeks more than 60,000 people have received a first vaccination at a centre in Bury. This is an important step as we look to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The impressive rollout of the vaccination programme demonstrates the team work and sheer determination that defines this borough and its people. I’ve been so proud of the way organisations of all sorts have come together.

“And I am confident that those relationships forged in the very worst of times will continue. We will build back better, together.”