‘Completely illogical’: Andy Burnham calls on people in infection-hit areas to ignore lockdown easing and stick to restrictions

Bolton has highest coronavirus rates in country but health measures have now been lifted anyway

(Reuters)

People living in two areas of Greater Manchester where coronavirus measures have been eased despite infection rates surging should ignore the government’s new guidelines and stick to previous restrictions, the region’s mayor has said.

Bolton and Trafford are among a number of places being released from the wider northern lockdown on Wednesday morning – meaning social gatherings between two households can resume for the first time since July.

But the decision to ease restrictions in the two boroughs came despite local leaders in both asking for measures to be maintained for at least another week.

It means Bolton is returning to normal life despite the latest NHS data showing it has the worst infection rates in the country and is in the "red zone." Trafford, meanwhile, has seen its own case numbers double in a week and is now in Public Health England’s amber zone.

Andrew Western, the Labour leader of Trafford Council, previously told The Independent he feared public health was being put at risk to placate local Tory MPs who instinctively appeared to want measures eased.

Now Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, has labelled the government’s decision “illogical” and said he recommended that the 550,000 people living across the two patches should “continue to follow the advice not to have social gatherings in the home”.

Asked specifically if they should refrain from visiting friends and family, he said: “I follow what the leaders of the councils in both cases say and yesterday the leader of Bolton Council and the leader of Trafford Council wrote to the government saying they felt in the circumstances in which they found themselves that they wanted to stay under the restrictions.”

And he added: “We find ourselves in a completely unsustainable position.

“Overnight we’ve had restrictions released from two boroughs where we’ve got rising number of cases – in one case in the red zone – and neighbouring boroughs are still under restrictions but with much lower numbers of cases. These restrictions were always hard to explain to the public, but they’re completely illogical now.”

He called for a change in approach to combatting Covid-19 spikes with greater emphasis placed on what he called “high-impact targeted interventions”, such as door to door test and trace, rather than blanket area lockdowns.

“I think they served a purpose, but we now need to move into a different phase,” he said. “It’s easy for the government, just to put communities under restrictions. It doesn’t cost them anything just to hand down these restrictions [but] ... actually, it causes a lot of issues on the ground for local communities.”

The northern lockdown, which placed such restrictions on 4 million people in Greater Manchester, parts of East Lancashire and large chunks of West Yorkshire, was initially announced on 30 July. It stopped different households mixing at home and prevented some close contact certain businesses from opening.

On Friday, a million of those people – including in Stockport; much of Bradford, Calderdale and Kirklees in West Yorkshire; and Burnley – were told they would be released from the measures from Wednesday.

The announcement itself was delayed by six hours amid the ongoing disputes between government and local leaders.

On Tuesday evening John Ashworth, Labour’s shadow health secretary, called on the government to publish the scientific data behind its decisions on where should and should not be released.