In Wednesday’s crunch meeting to review the Covid-19 tier system, Salford and the rest of Greater Manchester will be hoping to move down into ‘tier 2’ of restrictions.

It had been hoped by many that the area was going to enter a lower level of restrictions, having been affected since the second ‘lockdown‘ back in November, and stricter restrictions since October.

There are two major differences between tiers 2 and 3 regarding what you can and cannot do:

In tier 2, people are allowed to meet up with those outside of their support bubble, as long as they obey the ‘rule of six’. This includes meeting up in public spaces and in private gardens.

Meanwhile, hospitality venues like pubs, cafes, and restaurants are permitted to open a dine-in service, and serve alcohol as part of a ‘substantial meal’.

When the new tier system was enforced on December 2nd, there was much criticism about what tier was allocated to different areas.

For example, the rate of infection in Salford and the rest of Greater Manchester was lower than in some tier 2 areas like London.

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The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, said last week that London itself could be divided into tier 2 and tier 3 areas, due to the varying rates of infection in the capital.

However, that did not come to pass, as London had tier 3 restrictions imposed this past Monday.

If we were to apply the same logic to Greater Manchester, an area like Trafford could be spared even more time in tier 3. It had only 87.6 cases per 100,000 people.

But an area like Bury or Rochdale would not be so fortunate, with 226.7 and 193.8 cases respectively.

For Salford, cases have been in decline, with an 8.9% decrease in cases, down to 133.7 per 100,000.

So there may be some cautious optimism about what future restrictions are in Salford’s immediate future.

Whilst the tier review meeting is scheduled to happen on Wednesday, it likely won’t be until Thursday that the results of the review will be made public.

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