HEALTH

Many readers will know know something of London’s so-called “Great Plague”, which began in May 1665 and stretched into January 1666, and in which an estimated 100,000 people may have died out of a population of 350,000-400,000. A total of 68,596 burials  is accounted for in parish records, but so intense was the rate of death from July to September that many people’s burials went unrecorded.

Jacs, Kit and their team aim to share more about the great community that Lowestoft is and the people that make it so

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Simple Video calling under £40. offered by Lowestoft firm Computing For The Terrified  ideal for elderly relatives struggling with isolation

CoronaVirus Local links

Emergency Helpline "Home but not alone" 0800 876 6926

LOWESTOFT FOODBANKS and HELP FOR THE HOMELESS

There's one foodbank in the area, but they have several outlets  where you can get food. They usually operate a 'referral' scheme – a professional or established agency gives you a voucher of some kind which you take to the appropriate organisation. But Covid-times mean you need to check. 

Local figures for East Suffolk show we are not out of the woods yet. My graph clearly shows that. The red line shows national cases per 100,000, and that's levelling off. Suffolk (the blue line) consistently mirrors the national level, but we also have levelled off. The infection is still here. And with Christmas to come, we cannot relax. James Paget aren't, they know it's not over. Added: 23 September, 2023

It's getting darker in the forest. Not only are the days shortening, but the infection rate seems to be climbing inexorably.   The righthand chart shows the totals climbing every week, all week. The three-line graph demonstrates that being in Tier 2 is not as effective as Lockdown 2 in restricting transmission of this highly infectious virus. Added: 23 September, 2023

“We are currently awaiting further guidance on the new Covid-19 business grants announced by the Government yesterday and will update our website as soon as we have more information. The key thing that businesses can do at this stage is to apply for the Local Restrictions Support Grant (LRSG), which has been available since the lockdown in November, if they haven’t already. The online form and full details about how to apply with full eligibility criteria can be found below:

This graph shows why we in East Suffolk need to go into full lockdown, and should perhaps have done so earlier. September, local cases were pretty low. Encouraging, even. Then they started to go up, mirroring but still lower than the national climb. By October it was a strong upward trend. Eventually, the government put us into the second national Lockdown-With-Many-Exceptions. From the graph, it certainly seems that this had some effect, and by December the figures were around where we had started the lockdown. Added: 23 September, 2023

"To ensure that household waste and recycling collections are prioritised, East Suffolk Council and East Suffolk Norse have taken the decision to temporarily suspend the bulky waste collection service...from Friday 22 January" Bulk waste is things like fridges, cookers, washing machines, TVs and the like. For full details follow the link below to the East Suffolk Council site. East Suffolk/Norse are trying to make sure our usual household bin collection service keeps operating, as they suffer from Corona-Virus absences and stretched resources.

Under 70s Vaccinations begin on 15th Feb