COVID-19 Day of Reflection

The people of Surrey worked together to keep Surrey safe

March 2025 marks five years from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, with Sunday 9 March designated as a national day of reflection. The Government have set up a website with details of events happening across the UK.

The day of reflection provides an opportunity to remember those who lost their lives in Surrey since the pandemic began. It also gives us the chance to honour the tireless work and acts of kindness across our communities.

Surrey working together during COVID-19

A major incident was declared in Surrey on Thursday 19 March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

We saw Guildford's Spectrum Leisure Centre change at pace from a closed leisure centre one day, into a food depot the next. It became a hub from which to mobilise teams out to Surrey's most vulnerable residents with thousands of food boxes. By the summer of 2020 we had collectively delivered over 1,830 food boxes to Surrey's most vulnerable residents who were shielding. The Surrey Local Resilience Forum were helped to pack food the food boxes and get them on doorsteps by:

• local volunteers
• district and borough councils
• furloughed leisure centre staff
• NHS staff
• emergency services
• the Red Cross
• the voluntary, community and faith sector

An army of minibus drivers who normally took children to school and provide community transport were redeployed to ferry out the parcels.

Following the announcement by Government on 17 April 2020 that there was an extreme shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE), we called out to residents to support where they could. This saw local sewing groups galvanising together to make scrubs and other clothing for NHS staff. 7 million items of PPE were sourced, sorted and delivered to the front line.

In addition to their tireless work treating COVID-19 patients in Surrey hospitals, the NHS and health system/Primary Care networks were also setting up vaccination and testing centres in the most unlikely of places. In an effort to keep us all safe and deliver at speed, mass vaccination centres were set up at Sandown and Kempton racecourses. At the smaller end of the scale places like the Woking Mosque opened its doors to residents for vaccinations. Double decker vaccination buses were parking up in supermarket car parks for the same purpose.

Thanks should also go to our schools and education settings. This includes a big thanks to the teachers who worked tirelessly to maintain education and teaching to the children of Surrey. This began initially with remote lessons and then continued latterly in person with socially distanced safety measures in place. They often had to put measures in situ at very short notice, such as lateral flow testing, whilst also putting their own health at risk.

Care workers showed dedication and compassion working both in care homes and out in the community to keep undoubtedly some of the most vulnerable people safe during the pandemic. Care workers were often the only point of contact for those who were unable to be reunited with friends and family. We would also like to acknowledge the unpaid family carers in Surrey. These individuals faced additional mental and physical pressure, making an already difficult role even harder.

Volunteers

So much of the work during COVID-19 could not have been done without the help of volunteers. By summer 2020, over 10,000 volunteers had been registered. These people went on to work at:

• vaccination centres
• testing centres
• foodbanks
• making welfare visits
• helping with surge testing
• making befriending calls
• helping others with medicine collections and daily shopping

And these were just the registered volunteers! Many others community members performed random acts of kindness to help others.

COVID Heroes Book of Thanks

The Surrey County Council COVID Heroes Book of Thanks features just a fraction of those across our Surrey communities who went above and beyond to help others.

At this time of reflection, we remember those we have lost. However, we also say thanks to all those who pulled together in our streets, neighbourhoods, towns, villages, and most of all communities in Surrey, to keep Surrey Safe. We are better working together. Thank you.