Coronavirus: banding together in a life lived alone

In Kingston upon Thames, in southwest London, the note came through the door before breakfast.

An employee waits over empty tables in London’s Covent Garden on Tuesday. Picture: Getty Images

In Kingston upon Thames, in southwest London, the note came through the door before breakfast. Our three local streets have bi-­annual street parties, and cat-sitting and baby-minding groups, so this communication wasn’t a surprise.

Sally — a fellow Australian — was offering to buy groceries, pick up medication, be on the end of the phone for a morale-boosting chat, and was compiling a WhatsApp group for the more vulnerable and over-70s so that there was a roster of support throughout this grim time.

Within hours a book swap club was established, a schedule nutted out for the 23 resident under fives in the streets to use one neighbour’s backyard trampoline, and a rotating system of checks on people sick or in isolation with items left outside their doors.

Amazingly, the local corner store still has toilet paper, but the shopkeeper warned he believed all shops were to be shut by the weekend. He may be right.

In the town centre, foot traffic was down 90 per cent and the local school reported that absenteeism was more than 70 per cent. The ­always-bustling walk by the Thames, where children overfeed the swans and people sit for a riverside cafe and lunch, was deserted. The tables and chairs were neatly positioned for the patrons that would not come after Prime Minister Boris Johnson advised against gatherings in pubs, clubs and restaurants.

Families are hunkering down, for if the government has imposed a three-months quarantined for the over 70s and pregnant women, why play Russian roulette with children?

One of the schools reported one of the first coronavirus cases in the country, and now there are 71, with London rates of infection so high it is ahead of the rest of the country by several weeks.

In Kingston Hospital, at the southern end of the sprawling site where the Duchess of Cambridge did some maternity work placement just months ago, there was little activity. Deeper inside, where the blood collection stalls usually have a ticketed waiting system, there was no one, not even medical staff. They have been deployed to the medical frontline down the corridors at the accident and emergency department.

All non-urgent surgery is cancelled. At the drug dispensary, one desperate man pleaded with staff for face masks for his elderly ­parents.

Staff patiently told him they too, on the frontline, had no personal protection.

The pharmacist said they had dispensed 300 per cent more prescription drugs than normal in just a few hours on Tuesday, most being for the elderly stocking up for their three months in isolation.

At A&E it was reportedly ­increasingly frenetic and desperate. In parliament a letter from one doctor told of the “absolute carnage’’ and “utter chaos’’.

Scientists had miscalculated the rates of people presenting to hospital that ­the number requiring ventilators.

Facilities are being overwhelmed and the coronavirus crisis is only just beginning its upward curve here, according to government scientific advisers, who ­believe infection numbers could be as high as 50,000.

Johnson is expected to follow the lead of countries across the Channel very soon.

In the 12th arrondissement in Paris, my friend Jerome had just handwritten his “Attestation de deplacement derogatoire’’ certifying that his trip was authorised by article 1 of the decree of March 16, 2020, regulating travel as part of the fight against coronavirus.

His reason to be outside his flat? To go for a 20-minute jog in a park. He didn’t encounter any of the 100,000 military on the streets checking the paperwork. Fines of between €38 ($70) and €135 will be imposed, according to Interior Minister Christophe Castaner, who urged people to “stay at home” under the drastic measures that are to be in place for at least a fortnight.

“Never before in history has France had to take such exceptional measures in a time of peace,” he said.

At noon, the bistros across the land shut their doors and gave away food, and florists gave away flowers to motorists.

On Friday I will go for a long bike ride — it may be my last for many weeks.