City's cleaners disinfect seating areas in Sunderland city centre ahead of lockdown measures easing further

Sunderland City Council have tweeted a video showing their city centre street cleaning team disinfecting public seating areas in Keel Square to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

The tweet, posted on the Council’s official twitter page says: “Our city centre street cleaning team are continuing to disinfect public seating areas regularly during their shifts, in order to help stop the spread of Covid-19.”

It comes as lockdown measures have been gradually easing since the beginning of the month.

People can begin to meet in larger groups provided that social distancing is maintained and some schools on Wearside have started to reopen to wider pupils.

Measures are set to ease even further within the next week, with many stores in the city centre expected to reopen from Monday, June 15.

Also well as the reopening of “non-essential” shops, starting from next Monday, it will be mandatory for members of the public to wear face masks or a facial covering when using public transport.

The latest figures, released on Sunday, June 7 by the Department of Health show there have been 1,385 positive cases of Covid-19 in Sunderland.

The city still remains the worst affected upper tier local authority in the UK and the fifth worst when lower tier local authorities are considered, with 499.2 cases per 100,000 people.

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