Bolton in race against time to stop fresh wave of deadly virus

Celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid with his family on Thursday, Umar Mogra needed no reminder of the lethal capacity of Covid-19.

In February the virus swept through his family home in the narrow terraced streets of the Rumworth area of Bolton, infecting Umar, a 24-year-old pharmacology student at the University of Central Lancashire, and claiming the life of his 54-year-old father.

On Thursday, Umar attended socially distanced prayers at the nearby Al-Falah Mosque on Gibraltar Street (where he works as a volunteer and where masks and personal prayer mats are mandatory) before returning home for presents and a meat biryani with his mother and siblings.

Normally a day of celebration with family and friends, it was a deliberately reduced affair. “I don’t want other families to go through what we have,” he says.

But there is growing concern that the Lancashire town, already hit hard by Covid, could be about to endure another wave in infections. Bolton’s infection rate has doubled in the past week and currently sits at 152 cases per 100,000 people – the second highest in the country after Erewash in Derbyshire, whose own spike has been linked to an outbreak in a secondary school.

The Bolton cluster of infections is due to the Indian variant of concern which Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, has said he is anxious about and which could lead to more local restrictions being enforced.

The Rumworth area of the town, which has a large Muslim community and where 43.1 per cent of the population is classed as black and ethnic minority, is a particular hotspot and there are fears that Eid may further accelerate the rise.

Umar says some people have been put off being vaccinated during Ramadan (when Muslims fast) over the past month because of concerns over any side-effects, while others remain hesitant. “Some people are scared of taking the vaccine,” he admits.

The mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, police and local health officials have this week publicly cautioned against any mixing between households over Eid. On the eve of the festival Dr Niruban Ratnarajah, chairman of NHS Bolton Clinical Commissioning Group, said “we would urge people not to lose sight of what we are trying to achieve in Bolton".

The current spike is being driven by young people – the rate of infections for 10 to 14-year-olds is 244 new cases per 100,000 people, while for 15 to 19-year-olds age it is 223 – both more than 10 times the national average.

While around 90 per cent of those aged over 65 in the borough have had their first jab, among the younger generation locals feel the public health messages are not getting through – particularly around mask-wearing and social-distancing.

“The youngsters around here aren’t taking it seriously,” says Pradip Patel, 29, who works at a local branch of Sainsbury’s.

As well as refusing to stick to Covid guidelines, Mr Patel, whose family arrived in Lancashire from India, says local people travelling between the two countries before a ban was imposed last month will have accelerated the spread of the new variant.

Bolton has also proven itself something of a hotbed of Covid denial during the pandemic. Last September Yasmin Qureshi, Labour MP for Bolton South East, warned that some people in the area believed the virus was a fake, government-constructed concept and as a result were refusing to adhere to social-distancing guidelines.

The idea of Covid being a hoax is voiced by several young people I encounter who insist they have no intention of being vaccinated.

Alongside surge testing this week to determine the extent of the spread of the Indian variant, a bus has been parked in the grounds of the Essa Academy vaccinating residents with the Pfizer jab on a first-come-first served basis. Staff on site say they have been vaccinating 2-300 people a day.

Mr Burnham and others have called in recent days for all over-16s to be given the jab to ease the surge in cases. A local NHS spokesperson insisted the criteria for those at the vaccine bus remains only for people aged 38 and above in line with national guidelines, however the Telegraph spoke with a number of younger people queuing up.

Among them was Izhar Ulhaq, a 31-year-old sales assistant who had only recently returned to the UK from Pakistan before the country was added to the “red-list” last month.

He said he had contracted Covid in Pakistan in January and fallen seriously ill before eventually recovering. “I am really happy to get my jab,” he said.

The rising number of cases has yet to trickle down into hospitalisations and deaths.

In fact, there has not been a single death reported from Covid-19 at the Royal Bolton Hospital in the past two weeks, where overall 648 people have died since the start of the pandemic.

To break what has now become a depressingly familiar cycle, Bolton now knows it is in a race against time.