COVER STORY
THE ROAD TO
Y R E V O REC As the UK works through the third national lockdown Greg Fell, director of Public Health in Sheffield and Alexis Krachai, Sheffield Chamber of Commerce interim executive director and managing director of Counter Context, discussed the optimism of the vaccine rollout, the changes needed to the help available for businesses, and how the resilience of the Sheffield City Region business community. Words by Jill Theobald
“It is in all our interests to manage the virus spread best we can – in the long term and in the way we run our lives and businesses – because the notion of COVID secure will be with us for long time to come, I think.” Talking to Greg Fell in January as the UK entered its third national lockdown, there are probably not many employers or employees across the Sheffield City Region (SCR) who would be surprised to discover the Director of Public Health in Sheffield does not sugarcoat his predictions. “2020 was quite a difficult year – that’s an understatement, and 2021 will be bumpy no doubt
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about that. Lots of people want me to predict when it will be over. I don’t think it will be over in 2021 – that’s the honest answer.” However, he is also cautiously optimistic about the vaccine rollout – and the third lockdown coming to an end – and pays credit to businesses across the SCR who have responded by ‘adapting and pivoting’ the best they can. “We will come out of this third wave and the third lockdown and that will be quite a slowly declining tail. By that time, we will have a pretty well vaccinated population as well and that will have an impact, no doubt – and there will be caveats on that – but we’ll be no way
near a scenario where the whole population is immune. “There will still be susceptible people, so we are going to have to manage the impact of coronavirus probably for the foreseeable future. I’d like to say we could eliminate it but sadly that ship has been and gone – I think we will be in a bumpy place for at least a year would be my guess.” Bumpy – or ‘turbulent’ as Alexis Krachai, Sheffield Chamber of Commerce Interim Executive Director, views 2021. But the MD of Counter Context also describes himself as an optimist and sure enough does see some rays of light as we head into the new year, too.
“It will be turbulent, but we shouldn’t be worried or intimidated by that,” he says. “If we were to describe 2020 as a dark and challenging year, this year I think will be lighter but not plain sailing as we are not going to move swiftly beyond this pandemic. “So we’re going to have to show resilience and carry on innovating and as a business community be agile and be prepared for ups and downs. Overall, the trajectory will be more positive than perhaps we expect but I think 2021 will be better than 2020.” Both Greg and Alexis agree that until the enquiries start, not just here but around the world, we won’t know which countries’ approaches
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