Beauly GP Dr Ross Jaffrey reflects on community response and learnings from Covid pandemic to mark fifth lockdown anniversary

“It was really quite frightening - this was something that was completely new, something that we didn't know how dangerous it could be.”

Looking back at the March of 2020, just ahead of lockdown, Beauly-based GP Dr Ross Jaffrey remembers the fear of seeing the impact of Covid on patients in countries not too far from the UK.

“My wife is an anaesthetist, and their department had a lot of direct feedback from what was happening in Italy from the hospitals there, and it was really quite frightening.”

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Seeing what was happening elsewhere in the world, the team at his surgery decided to take early precautions, closing on March 13 - ten days before the UK government declared national lockdown.

He said: “We were probably one of the first surgeries to do that, and I think that that was really what started to trigger a response in the wider community - what could be done locally, when nationally not much was happening.

“Very early on, we wanted to try and communicate how we could reduce and mitigate risk.”

However, he recalled, business continued almost as usual for healthcare professionals.

“When things were shut down, we still operated as normal. Although a lot of people feel that a lot of GP practices weren't, we were still taking calls every day and still seeing people face-to-face.

“I think that's one of the things that has been slightly manipulated, in that there's still this perception that doctors weren't seeing people face to face, but if you were unwell, we were. And, often, you know, putting ourselves at risk.”

The first weeks for him, his wife and young children were scary, stepping into unknown territory and having to join the professionals that were on the front line.

One of the first steps he and his wife took, said Dr Jaffrey, was to organise a will, just after e decided to volunteer at the Covid hub.

“We needed to make sure that we had these things in place. That's how frightening it was.

“We didn't know what was going to happen if we caught it. Working with people who were likely to have it, your risk of catching it increased.

“I had to go to the Covid hub and see people with symptoms and manage them. Then, you were feeling guilty that you would bring it home with you.”

To help the community shield from the virus, the Beauly GP also launched a campaign called “Safe Hands, Saves Lives” - which aimed to bring to rural communities hand sanitiser and other tools to prevent the spread of Covid, as well as becoming a source of information through its Facebook group.

The community engagement proved very positive, with 15,000 people joining the campaign’s group at one point.

“There was a huge lack of communication about what was happening at the local level, so I wanted to see if I could do something to help,” he explained.

“Because we had no real treatment for Covid, avoiding getting it was the key. So it was about pushing out common sense, public messages trying to make sure people washed their hands and be careful.

“We did find that there was a lack of certain items - like hand sanitiser. So I was able to link in with local distilleries, that were really open to trying to help.”

That collaboration led to the introduction of hand sanitiser stations in villages in and around the Beauly area, which might otherwise not have had access to hand sanitiser. Through a grant provided by the council as well as donations from other GP practices, hand sanitiser containers were dotted across Highland.

For his efforts in helping the local community, Dr Jaffrey was named Healthcare Hero of the year at the Highland Heroes Awards in 2022, as events started slowly returning back to normal.

However, looking back at the years of the pandemic and the wider response to it, Dr Jaffrey said we need to remain vigilant - as the past years saw a growing number of people concerned about or openly against vaccines, he said we need to be prepared in front of the resurgence of diseases that seemed long forgotten.

He said: “We have had vaccines for a lot longer than Covid has existed, and they have been a cornerstone of our public health measures. Without them, we would struggle to combat preventable diseases,

“We're now starting to see a re-emergence of that in certain parts of the world - including the States, where you've got measles outbreaks making headlines.

“They are quite scary. And these are conditions we do know everything about, and we do have an option that we can use to mitigate that risk.

A campaigner to return vaccines to GP practices in the Highlands, Dr Jaffrey said that it is important to retain the figure of the family doctor across rural communities, although he believes the mounting pressures on practices and healthcare in general, which has built up from the pandemic years, is not going to ease.

He said: “I have a real worry that the family doctor is going to end up in a very transactional place. Set a set amount of appointments once they're gone, they're gone.

“I'm a huge believer in continuing to maintain the family doctor as it is. In the Highlands, we have in general been quite good at keeping that going.

“We believe in looking after our own patients, and I think that's something that we really strongly would fight to retain.”

As five years have passed since that March, Dr Jaffrey said that there are silver linings to look for.

“I think that people have more awareness of what can happen with an unknown problem, he said.

“Probably, we’ll never do what we did again. I would say the mechanisms used were quite blunt, and probably didn't need to be.

“I hope we've learned a lot from some of the downsides as well as from the upsides of the way the country managed the pandemic.

“The Covid inquiry is still on at the moment. I think there are still a lot of questions to be answered with respect to some of the negative things, but I think as a country, we did pull together and did our best in a difficult circumstance

“Five years on — I am just delighted to be able to go and see people. I think it really does highlight the importance of community.”

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