alice wiseman is the director of public health for gateshead. shejoins me now.ime. are the people living in gateshead clear as to what the restrictions are? so i wait till my coat think the way the messages have been delivered has been very challenging. they came into force at midnight last night but we didn't see the regulations ourselves until 11pm last night. so we have spent the day trying to get communication out, trying to make sure our residents understand what it is we are asking them to do and why we asking them to do it. but it's definitely been a challenging 24 it's definitely been a challenging 2a hours. it's definitely been a challenging 24 hours. in your position, have you had a lot of people questioning exactly what it is that are allowed and not allowed to do? what do you explain to them? absolutely. they have every right to ask us about what we are asking them to do. i think my key that what we are trying to do is to break the transmission. and what we've done is looked at the places where people are most likely to become infected with the virus

here is the director of health, alice wiseman. 80% are close contacts, those who identify with close contact to a cod positive case. atwhether s in the household, back gardens, .spitality secto we have aon s number of young people testing positive. more tha 80% are in the working age population. we want to target the moment we are seeing. host: local leaders have welcomed theghanges, s it is necessary to stop the ansmission of the virus, but they are critical of the way the govement has gone about it my worry is the way the government is doing this, in a pretty shambolic way, i asorry to say. i take no pride takeg a shot at overnment in this. we have got to be working together. by not doing so we are vdermining ty thing we want to achieve, which is keeping people safe. host: even members of the governments are caught up in the complexity of the rules. >> i know the rest of the country generally you can meet in a pub and book a table and restrictions are indoors. [indiscernible] no, i don't know the answer to that question. hi don'

to look at this in more depth i am joined by our health correspondent nick triggle and alice wisemanalth for gateshead. thanks forjoining the programme this afternoon. let's start with this question from shareen simon which says should a gathering of more than six people be restricted if dish also or otherwise missing if there were two gatherers of more than six people for any situation, that would create huge rooms for schools and workplaces. what they are doing here is they are trying to tackle a specific problem and that is the fact that the police did not have powers to disperse groups if there were up to 30 people and the current guidance had said to households of any size or up to six people from different households. and police were reporting that they we re and police were reporting that they were faced with large gatherings, large parties that they did not feel they had the powers to crack down on facade they are introducing these new rules that will allow police to issue fines of £100 doubling for each offence to tackle this specific problem. david well asked at this. there

here's the gateshead director of public health alice wiseman.n our data... those identified as a close contact of a covid—positive case have come from household mixing whether in the household, in the back gardens are also in the hospitality sector as well. we have a very small number of young people who are testing positive. but actually more than 80% of our cases in gateshead at the moment are in working age population. what we are wanting to do is target the place where at the moment we are seeing the most likeliest of the transmission being. local leaders have welcomed the changes, saying they're necessary to stop transmission of the virus but they're critical of the way the government has gone about it. this is the newscastle city council leader. my worry is the way that the government is doing this in a pretty shambolic way i am sorry to say and i take no kind of pride in taking a kind of shot at the government on this, it's not something i want to do. we have got to be working together because by not doing so we are undermining the very t

and alice wiseman, director of public health in gateshead — one of 12 councils who have written to the asking for increased lockdown restrictions to put in place across north east england. first of all, tell us how many people are turning up, probably not knowing where else to go? today, we had around a hundred people attending and many of them were wanting a coronavirus test, unable to access the national system and they were worried about their families. you can understand their desperate to get their appointments oi’ desperate to get their appointments or use their local nhs facilities and unfortunately, because it is a centralised, natural light system, they cannot. the ethical and the national system which is been com pletely national system which is been completely underwhelmed —— they have to utilise. and increase testing capacity at this time of year with schools coming back. how representative is that of what you are seeing? people often turn up at hospitals when other parts of the nhs let them down orjust overwhelmed. yes, it is very complicated, the system that is been set u

also i'm joined by alice wiseman, director of public health for gateshead.it, if there we re well if you think about it, if there were if they were to ban gatherings of more that six people that would create huge problems for schools, workplaces, what they are doing is trying to tackle a specific problem, and that is the fact that the police didn't have powers to disperse groups if they were up to 30 people, and the current guidance said, two households of any size of up to six people from different households could gather. police said they were faced with large gatherings they didn't feel they had the powers to crackdown on. so they are introducing new rules that will allow police to issue fines of £100 to tackle this problem. when we talk about specifics david lowe asked this, there is confusion out there. is this six people from two household, three, orfour as in scotland, wales and northern ireland? scotland, wales and northern ireland ? if so scotland, wales and northern ireland? if so which one? it is six people from any household, but it is a maximum

let's speak now to alice wiseman, director of public health at gateshead council in the northeast of list. we have been concerned ourselves over the last few weeks around the rapid rise. this has not been a surprise to us. we welcome the opportunity to work closely with government to ensure we are doing all the things we can to put protection in place to stop the spread in our communities. we have already ta ken spread in our communities. we have already taken quite robust steps. a week ago, last friday, when i saw the numbers are increasing, we stopped visits to care homes, obviously with some exceptions for end—of—life or other situations where it would be particularly detrimental. we have also tried to increase our communication. i think munication has been a real challenge throughout the pandemic, and being really clear with our community about what the measures are, what it means to them, but also by it is important. i think that is something we potentially lost over the last few weeks. it is important to all of us because we might not be at risk of becoming severely unwell, but