Essex Police Responds To Calls Of Rave, Finds Elderly Waiting For COVID Vaccine

When the Essex Police responded to calls of a gathering in violation of COVID-19 rules, they thought they were going to shut down a rave, but the officers only found elderly citizens queueing up to get coronavirus vaccine shot.

Neighbors had reported revellers, who they thought were flouting COVID-19 norms, outside Saxon Hall on Friday, according to the New York Post, which cited Echo News.

The police only found the elderly lining up to get the coronavirus vaccine. “It was really funny when the police arrived as they had been notified that there was a ‘rave’ taking place at Saxon Hall — only to find 80- and 90-year-olds on wheelchairs,” Saxon Hall chairman Dennis Baum said.

The police eventually helped manage the traffic around the hall, and later returned in the afternoon to ensure that the vaccine drive was progressing smoothly at Saxon Hall, one of the COVID-19 vaccination sites.

Essex moved into COVID-19 alert level 5 of the U.K. government's restrictions on Jan. 6. According to a government statement, alert level 5 means that COVID-19 epidemic is in general circulation and the transmission is high or rising exponentially. It also means that there is a material risk of healthcare services being overwhelmed.

The new mutated COVID-19 strain has raised concerns and fears in the U.K. Mentioning the new variant, the Essex Police had said in a statement that it will respond to “clear and blatant breaches of the regulations” while continuing to “engage with people, explain the regulations, and encourage them to do the right thing.”

Essex Police had earlier broken up an illegal New Year's Eve party at All Saints Church in East Horndon after a ‘major incident’ was declared in Essex amid fears that the number of COVID-19 cases could overwhelm the healthcare system, according to the BBC.

The number of coronavirus cases in the U.K. has surpassed 3 million and the death toll is more than 90,000, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University. The U.K. began its vaccination drive earlier this month with a 90-year-old becoming the first person to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.