CUMBRIA'S public health boss has opened up on two years of wrestling with the Covid-19 pandemic, describing it as the biggest challenge of his career.

Colin Cox said he would work 'long into the night' during the early days of the pandemic as health officials up and down the country worked out how to respond to the deadly virus.

Fears over the virus - first discovered in China - began to reach British shores at the beginning on 2020.

More than 2,000 people have died with Covid-19 in Cumbria since the first case was confirmed in the county in March of that year.

Mr Cox said: "Certainly in the first two years there's no doubt it was the busiest I've ever been and it was the most consequential thing I've had to deal with.

"It was massively hard work but the teams in Cumbria pulled together and did fantastic work.

"In a way it was hard and it was awful but it was also somewhat rewarding - the team effort and the way everyone responded was just amazing."

Preparations to deal with the virus ramped up in 2020 with a full national lockdown imposed by the Government on March 23.

"It was pretty obvious relatively early in mid-January this was something that was likely to be significant so we had to start looking at how to prepare for it," Mr Cox said.

"I remember the early days in March 2020 when you knew it was coming it was just a matter of when and it was like watching this big wave coming towards you, you knew it was going to be absolutely awful.

"When it did hit and the first lockdown, that was probably the most difficult bit. We were dealing particularly with cases in care homes and problems there - that was really hard.

"There was no vaccine and no effective specific treatments at that time and you did feel powerless about it in that first wave."

After the first national lockdown was lifted and a second imposed in November 2020, the first vaccine for the virus was administered to people in December 2020.

Since then more than 400,00 people in Cumbria have received at least one dose. 

Looking back on the roll-out of the jab, he said: "That was astonishing. Because we've all seen several runs of it I think everyone's got used to the idea of a Covid vaccine.

"I don't think we should underestimate what a huge scientific achievement that was. 

"To go from the first identification of the virus and to have a fully functioning vaccine in a year is utterly remarkable.

"That was always going to be the way of getting out of Covid."

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In total, more than 164,000 people in Cumbria have tested positive for Covid-19, official figures suggest, while 2,066 people in the county have the virus mentioned on their death certificate.

Cumbria has seen the 19th highest death rate among local authorities in England and Wales.

Mr Cox said: "The consequences in Cumbria were huge.

"We've seen more than 2,000 dying of Covid and that's an awful toll on health and wellbeing in the county."

Though many have been vaccinated, transmission of the virus has not stopped.

According to the most recent available data, 443 cases of the virus have been recorded in Cumbria in seven days.

"There's no doubt while it's circulating it's never quite dropping to zero and it's doing less harm to people," Mr Cox said. 

"Assuming we don't see any new variants it's probably going to continue doing this and effectively become an endemic circulating virus.

"Whether it will slow down and become something like cold and flu we don't quite know yet.

"But it's clear people are treating it largely like one of the normal circulating viruses that we see."