Covid is spreading in workplaces in Sunderland as council urges people to work from home amid high case rate

People are being asked to only go to work if they ‘really can’t work from home’ as coronavirus case numbers remain stubbornly high in the city.

Gerry Taylor, the Sunderland Council's executive director of Public Health and Integrated Commissioning, reminded those who have to go into work to follow safety measures to keep themselves and colleagues safe.

She said: “I’d ask everyone to be particularly careful about following the guidance to stay at home if we can, and only go to work if we really can’t work from home.

"For anyone who has to go to go out to work, it’s also really important to follow all of the Covid secure guidance when you are there.

"That includes while on your break at work and on your way to and from work, as well as following the hands, face, space guidance to keep yourself and your colleagues safe and help bring rates down.

"We are seeing transmission in the community, within and between families as well as some cases in workplaces.

"We’re continuing to work with businesses to help them keep their workplaces Covid secure and we’ve got information on our website to help.”

The city’s Public Health director called on people to pull together and do their bit to reduce the number of coronavirus cases.

"Unfortunately, we're not seeing any real change in the number of positive cases of Covid across the city and our infection rates continue to be relatively high,” she said.

"This really reinforces the need for us all to redouble our efforts to reduce the spread of Covid-19.”

She continued: “We all need to be particularly cautious and pull together as a city to get the number of cases down.

“We have managed to do this before and we know we can achieve it again.

"So I would urge everyone who has done such a brilliant job over the last year of sticking to the rules, to do everything they can to help get case numbers down by following the guidance at all times and not letting their guard down anywhere."

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