The spectre of patients ill with Covid being transferred up to Nottingham reveals not just that West Herts Hospitals NHS Trust is overwhelmed, but that we are not on top of this virus.

As record numbers of Covid deaths are reported, the calls already by some in Tory ranks to end lockdown are deplorable and explain the dismal handling and the UK’s death toll in the crisis.

The Government guidance all along has been lax, lacklustre, skewed by economic interests that seem to contend that a dead employee is a price worth paying to prop up the exchequer.

The attitude at ground level only mirrored this relaxed and carefree approach: the newly created skateboard rink in Oxhey Park was full of families mingling. It was unreal and like - ‘Watford, what virus?’ But why was it even open? It should have been closed and cordoned off so it was not possible to congregate.

Now as we pay dearly for the short-sighted recklessness we already have the ‘it’s for the economy, stupid’ mob stamping their feet calling for schools to reopen even though we now learn infection is not only rife among the young but that they are becoming seriously ill, with hospital intensive care beds increasingly taken by people 30 to 50 years old.

Dave Degen

Whippendell Road, Watford