Stormont ministers should stop hiding behind the R number and help to get non essential retail outlets re-opened

Across almost all of Europe, there are very encouraging signs about the retreat of coronavirus.
News Letter editorialNews Letter editorial
News Letter editorial

Some experts are even beginning to be hopeful that there will be no second wave of Covid-19.

We cannot, of course, assume there will be no such return, but nor can we stay in lockdown in case there might be. If the virus returns then restrictions might too.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

One of the triumphs of social distancing is the way the public has behaved so well, to try to help halt Covid’s spread.

Business owners, with restraint and dignity, have overwhelmingly accepted the massive hit to their livelihoods.

Parents have accepted damage to their kid’s education.

Patients in the NHS with severe non Covid conditions have accepted that their own urgent treatment might be delayed.

Employees across the nation have lost their jobs.

Now however, Stormont needs to be more forthcoming about the timing of its return to normality.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Car parks to parks, beauty spots and forests reopen today, but too late. People have rightly flocked to public spaces, where they can be seen walking in family groups and behaving sensibly in the outdoors, which we are told is safer than indoors, yet have had to park on roads beside these facilities.

The various business organisations and businesses that we quote on page 5 are right that Northern Ireland must now follow England with a return to non essential retail trade on June 15. Those outlets will come up with social distancing measures just as large and small supermarkets have done.

And how uplifting it is to read Chris Currie, principal of Killinchy Primary, state the obvious: “We can’t go on like this. We can’t go on indefinitely paying teachers’ salaries and compromising children’s education in this way.”

Yet it still seems that the autumn return to schooling will only be a slow, rotating one, amid a miniscule risk to pupils.

It is time for leadership from Stormont politicians, who keep hiding behind the R number. If any party is blocking the easing of rules, then let us to be told who so we can ask why.