Coronavirus Diaries – Part 4

April 14th to April 30th 2020

Welcome to our Coronavirus Diaries – Part 4.

By now, we were deep into lockdown and all adjusting to our ‘new normal’. We appreciated, very much, that our circumstances hadn’t changed hugely – considering I’m a stay at home Mum and Dave works from home on a permanent basis anyway. So for us, the adjustment into this strange new World had been less extreme than for others.

However, we did have to get used to being indoors A LOT more, spending less time at soft plays, swimming pools, extra-curricular activities and birthday parties than we were used to.We adapted by baking almost daily, doing lots more crafts, playing in the garden endlessly and doing lots of Zoom calls to friends and families. To date neither of the children have shown any negativity to their current lifestyles. Which I’m extremely thankful for. If they are happy, then I’m happy!

Within the UK, there was increasing outcry that Care Home death figures were not being included in the daily statistics. Something that was resolved shortly afterwards. Considering, sadly, how many of the deaths were from care homes it was essential that they were included.

15th April

On the 15th April tests were rolled out for all care home staff and residents to try and get the outbreak in the UK’s care homes under control. I can’t imagine the worry if you had relatives in care homes.

Later that week, with the Prime Minister still absent whilst he recovered from Coronavirus, the Foreign Secretary announced that the UK would be under lockdown for a further 3 weeks. Something we had all expected. Our figures were far from in control with over 100,000 coronavirus cases nationwide.

One of the happier stories to come out at this time was that of (now Sir) Tom Moore. A 99 year old veteran who pledged to walk 100 laps of his garden by his 100th birthday. His endeavour captured the nations heart and he went on to raise over £30 million pounds for NHS Charities Together. He also got a number 1 single on the UK charts and broke two Guinness World Records in the process!

20th April

By the 20th April the death rates in the UK was 16,905. Rising anywhere from 500 to 800 per day. Quite an unbelievable figure – it’s still hard to imagine quite what it must be like in hospitals having to deal with this on a daily basis.

During the daily press conference Professor Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, tells the public that ‘we will have to live with some social distancing measures for at least the rest of the year, and that it is “wholly unrealistic” to expect life to suddenly return to normal in the short term.’

25th April

On the 25th April deaths passed 20,000 in the UK and there was a lot of talk of the Virus having passed the peak of infection. It felt like it SURELY couldn’t keep increasing with this, already catastrophic, death rate. Sure enough the following day, at the daily press conference, it was confirmed that the scientists felt that social distancing was starting to have a positive effect.

To further confirm this, our Prime Minister, Boris Johnson returned to office the following day (after his serious case of Coronavirus) and officially announced that the UK was past the peak. However, with deaths edging closer to 27,000 it didn’t feel there was much to celebrate.

30th April

By the 30th April, the deaths in the UK were 26,771. Talk started to turn to easing the lockdown and the Prime Minister, confirmed he’d be outlining how this would happen in the coming weeks.

For us, we’d got to the end of our 5th week in lockdown and were pretty adapted to our new routines. I really appreciated the work sent through from the school each week, I felt I was getting better at homeschooling and really starting to enjoy it.

Highs

• My 5 year old and I had got into a lovely routine of going out every few days, her on her bike and me running. I’d never had considered doing that pre lockdown, but with quiet roads and nice weather it’s been a real highlight.
• With less pressure to be here or go there, life was much more relaxed. Less rushing, less pestering for shoes to be on and generally less stress. It was a nice by product of lockdown.
• It was so QUIET. Our road is often busy at rush hour, but these days we barely saw a car. The flight path above us to Heathrow was empty. We saw a plane or two a week. In comparison to a plane or two an hour!

Lows

• The death toll had already surpassed the one predicted of 20,000 earlier in the pandemic. I couldn’t help but start to think we did not have a handle on this at all.
• There was low stock of a lot of products in the shop. Particularly baking goods (flour, sugar and so on). And toilet roll and cleaning products were still hard to find. It made shopping and planning for the week quite stressful, and it made me really focus on using up what we had already before buying more.

For more on our Coronavirus Diaries until now check out our other entries – Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.