Welcome to the first Local Authority of 2023! 2022 was our first full year and the amount of support and positive feedback has been amazing. I’m also thrilled to say that we reached 1,000 subscribers to this newsletter over the Christmas break. As ever, thank you so much for reading, and welcome if this is your first time here. Sadly, we need to start today with a rather sadder 1,000...

Covid death toll in Medway reaches 1000

hospital bed near couch — The lesser spotted empty hospital bed.

Medway reached 1,000 deaths caused by covid this week.

It’s a difficult figure to wrap your head around. It’s a figure that is simultaneously a lot but also perhaps rather distant for many of us.

Medway has a population of around 280,000, so roughly 1 in 280 people in Medway have lost their lives to this virus.

That’s a figure that feels rather more stark.

There’s been a certain grim inevitability in this news for a while now. Since the beginning of this newsletter, I’d included as many Medway covid figures as I could get hold of every week. On the week of our launch issue in August 2021, 806 Medway residents had died as a result of the virus.

Indeed, the vast majority of covid deaths in Medway came relatively early on in the pandemic, mostly centred around the initial arrival of the virus and surge around winter 2020/21, when over 80 people lost their lives in a single week.

Medway covid deaths throughout the pandemic.

The vaccines were clearly a game changer for the trajectory of the pandemic. While the virus is still pretty grim for those most vulnerable to it and the risks of long covid are significant, the direct death rate attributed to it has fallen off dramatically.

But even with that, the number of people still dying due to covid isn’t insignificant.

In 2022, the death toll was 126.

That’s lower than the previous years for sure, but 126 isn’t nothing. That’s 126 lost partners, parents, and children. 126 families were devastated by a virus that didn’t even exist four years ago.

I have no grand point to make here. We all have our personal views on covid and the measures (or lack thereof) in tackling it. There have been times when things were likely too strict. There have also been times when we probably should have been taking it a little more seriously.

Arguably one of them is now given there are now no restrictions, and 126 of our fellow Medway residents didn’t make it through the year.

If anything else was causing the death of 126 Medway residents in a year, we’d likely be looking at measures that could be taken to reduce that. But we’ve seemingly decided that this is an acceptable amount of deaths for things to be “normal”.

It isn’t, but we’ll keep pretending it is anyway.

I’ll continue to report the figures for as long as they remain available, which leads us to...

Covid in numbers

Cases: We still don’t have much specific local data, but 5.2% of the population in the south east are estimated to test positive for coronavirus this week, up from 2.1% two weeks ago. An increase was expected with the Christmas period, but this is a significant jump in the case rate across the region.

Medway covid hospitalisations over the past year.

Hospitalisations: There are currently 31 patients being treated for covid in Medway Hospital, with none on a ventilator. This is up 15% from two weeks ago but seems destined to increase given the case rate figures above.

Deaths: 1 new death was recorded in the past fortnight, which as highlighted above takes Medway to 1,000 covid deaths in total.

Vaccinations: 60% of the 12+ population in Medway have received at least three doses of covid vaccine.
10% of those under 12 have had at least one dose of the vaccine.
64% of those aged 50+ have so far had their autumn booster.

Medway Hospital vs the world

If you’ve had any reason to have contact with Medway Hospital in recent weeks, it’s become clear that they are currently under significant strain. This is a national problem caused by chronic underfunding and decreased access to community healthcare.

This is currently leading to hundreds of excess deaths per week across the country.

For some perspective of how bad things are nationwide, new data published this week by the BBC sets out how each hospital trust is performing on a range of metrics.

Much has been made about ambulance wait times, but this is one area where Medway is performing relatively well. 15% of the 700 ambulances arriving at Medway in the week starting 26 December had to wait more than 30 minutes to transfer patients into A&E. Certainly 15% isn’t a good figure in itself, but the nationwide average is currently 44%, and Medway has somehow improved it’s figured compared to the same time period in 2021. So given how low the bar is now set for what’s acceptable, this feels reasonably good.

39% of patients at Medway Hospital are waiting longer than 18 weeks to begin routine treatments. This is a horrific figure, and more than double what it was a year ago, but somehow it’s still lower than the national average. As someone currently waiting on two different hospital referrals (one has been quoted at 50 weeks), I’m keenly interested in this particular metric. And things here definitely aren’t as rosy, and yet somehow they could still be worse.

The final metric sets out where Medway Hospital is struggling most, which won’t be a surprise to anyone who has been to A&E lately. 40% of patients were waiting more than four hours in A&E, which is above the national average of 35% and a big jump on last year. More worryingly is that these figures are from November, and anecdotally the picture has deteriorated further since then.

The NHS is clearly in a state of crisis, both on a local level and a national one. It’s also hard to see much changing this without significant political will to do so, something that doesn’t seem to be forthcoming at the moment.

Medway councillor speaks from the 60s

Scenes straight from the 1960s at last night’s Medway Council Children and Young People Overview and Scrutiny Committee, where councillors were discussing a report on ‘tackling racism in schools’. A number of Conservative councillors managed to turn the issue around to talking about how anti-white racism exists too, despite this not being the point of the report at all, but here we are.

The peak came from Cllr Wendy Purdy, who in the spirit of anti-racism talked about how her grandson had issues understanding his “coloured” tutor, which apparently made him racist. As the BBC helpfully point out, the world was “seen as an acceptable word to use in much of the UK until the 1960s and 1970s”.

But here we are, in 2023, still hearing this kind of thing from a publicly elected official. More depressing is that not one person in the room - fellow councillors from both parties, or council officers - raised any issue with the language being used.

You can watch the section of the meeting with the discussion here.

Medway has an LGBT+ centre

The 2021 census data drops just keep on coming, with new maps being published this week setting out the results from the sexual orientation of the census. This question is optional, but over 93% of Medway residents chose to answer it, meaning we have a clearer picture of the LGBT+ community in our towns.

2.8% of respondents identified themselves as LGBT+. This is likely to be understated as some people will inevitably be uncomfortable either answering the question or doing so truthfully. But it does at least give us a rough picture of where our LGBT+ community is. And it turns out it is mostly around Chatham and Rochester.

Census map data showing LGBT+ respondents. The darker an area is the more LBGT+ respondents in that area.

Significant LGBT+ communities exist around Rochester, the Intra area, Luton, the north of Gillingham and St Mary’s Island, where over 4% of residents identify as such. More amusingly, the data does also allow us to identify the straightest areas of Medway too, which turns out to be Hempstead, Wigmore, and Capstone. Who would have thought?

More Authority

Paid supporters of Local Authority receive two extra editions of the newsletter every week. This week, we published our monthly events guide, highlighting interesting things happening through January. Also, in our latest interview, Steven Keevil sat down to talk local politics with Medway Elects creator and political journeyman Alan Collins.

Becoming a paid supporter ensures we can keep this thing running for the long term and currently costs as little as £3.75 per month. Please consider it if you can!

Stray Links

Garry Hirst, known locally as The Rainham Sheriff, has passed away. (KentLive)
Rochester is set to lose it’s Post Office unless a new operator can be found. (KentOnline)
Redevelopment of the offices above the Pentagon is now underway. (FutureChatham)
GPs are being offered £15,000 payments to come to Medway. (KentOnline)

Footnotes

If you’ve reached this newsletter through the web or someone sending it to you, subscribe to get new issues delivered straight to your inbox every Friday!

Subscribe now

If you hear about any Medway news that might be of interest, let me know! Hit reply to message me directly, DM me on Twitter, or leave a comment below.

Leave a comment

Music that soundtracked the creation of this newsletter: Dissatisfactions by Onsind, Seems Unfair by Trust Fund, You Can Do Better by Johnny Foreigner, and A Guide For The Daylight Hours by Ballboy.