Two years on, we realise how coronavirus affected Colchester

A two-month lockdown would have been a slightly bigger ask – but not insurmountable if we pull through it together.

If anybody had prophesied we would face two national lockdowns and almost two years of restrictions, they would have been labelled an insane doom-monger, better off writing a script for the next B-movie horror film.

Yet what unfolded over the course of the next couple of years was, for many of us, exactly that – a real-life horror movie.

The Gazette reported on the first death on March 24, 2020

It was not just the confinement and restrictions on how our lives every day – it was the dreadful death toll, the loss of livelihoods and long-term Covid which changed some lives forever.

It was the loss of our friends, our family members, our acquaintances we thought would be with us for so much longer – it was being unable to see or support them when they really needed us.

Those of us fortunate enough to avoid infection paid closer attention to the news than perhaps any time previously – it was as devastating to report as it was to watch, read, or listen to, but it had to be done.

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As with any national or global event, its significance was such that we will all remember where we were two years ago, when the Government introduced the strictest curbs on our lives since the Second World War.

Personally, I had just about had enough of the news, and decided to take a digital detox during some of the most important hours the country had faced in recent years.

With my phone switched off, having returned from an evening run and with Classic FM on in the kitchen, I quite literally missed everything.

Meanwhile, my sister’s boyfriend was driving her to the Scottish border, taking a massive detour to Manchester to pick me up, before driving us both to a Roadchef service station in Dumfries.

From there, my parents took me and my sister all the way back to Aberdeenshire, where we got through the front door at about 5.30am.

For me, that was how the first lockdown began, and many of us will have similar tales – not just of the panic, but of the shock of just how serious the coronavirus pandemic quickly became, and that this was something to be taken so seriously that we would all change how we lived our lives to protect ourselves and our families.

The Covid-19 vaccine proved to be a vaccine in the most literal sense

The first UK coronavirus case came in January 2020 but understanding the significance did not come until far later.

The first recorded UK death as a result of Covid-19 came in early March.

In the early stages of the pandemic, a single death was enough to make a news headline – but as the weeks went on, it became less a case of who had died, but how many.

The first Covid-19 related death in Colchester was recorded on March 18, 2020 – five days before the nationwide lockdown but inevitably, and trragically, that number was to climb.

The 100 mark was hit a few months later that year in June, with the total number of Covid-19 deaths in Colchester reaching 540 as of last week.

But alongside the chastening numbers of cases and deaths came the hope that something – anything – could give us some sort of immunity from the virus.

The answer, of course, was always the vaccine – but it was a question of how quickly it could be developed and rolled out on a national and international scale.

In Colchester, the first vaccines were administered on December 9 – fewer than six months after the first recorded death in the town.

A few months later, more than 2,000 people in Colchester were receiving their first jab in a single day and, as of last week, as many as 113,539 people had received all three of their jabs.

There are still tens of thousands of Covid-19 cases being diagnosed each day across Britain – but with nearly three quarters of the UK population now fully vaccinated, people are safer from Covid-19 than they have ever been.

One man who has been in the thick of the battle against Covid-19 is Nick Hulme, the chief executive the East Suffolk North Essex Foundation Trust.

ESNEFT chief executive Nick Hulme said nothing prepared him or ESNEFT hospitals for the global pandemic that ensued

He, as with many of us, finds it a little disorienting looking back two years, when we were all on the edge of unchartered territory.

Mr Hulme, who became the NHS vaccination lead for 12 to 15-year-olds, said: “A two-year period seems a long time ago now and it’s easy to forget what it was like on those early days.

“It was completely unprecedented – I’ve been involved in hours and hours of flu planning, but none of that prepared us for what was going to happen with Covid.

“The challenge we had was that staff were facing some really challenging situations in the hospital and also those same challenges at home – the lack of interaction, children not being at school, and that meant staff were unable to get the downtime and social life where they can relax.

“On the positive side, we have remembered how the whole community came together – and I’m not just talking about people clapping on a Thursday night.

“It was more the sense of coming together with a common purpose – it was an extraordinary time.”

As a healthcare professional of over 35 years, the pandemic was always going to offer lessons – so what were his?

“The first lesson is, don’t be afraid to say ‘I don’t know’ – even though we always want to have the answer.

“I’ve become much better at identifying what really matters to our staff and patients, rather than people from outside the organisation.

“What got me through was a great bunch of colleagues.

“There’s a great saying that we’ve all been through the same storm but we’ve all been in different boats.

“The support of colleagues was essential and that sense of purpose that we were making a difference.”