We all know that London seems to be the hardest-hit area in the UK for coronavirus, but how does the picture look across the different boroughs?

It’s no surprise that inner-London boroughs with large populations and big hospitals such as Southwark, Lambeth and Wandsworth have seen some of the highest number of cases, but other areas like Kingston have fared far better.

We spoke to Kingston’s Director for Public Health, Iona Lidington, about the situation there, and asked her why Kingston stands out for having the lowest number of coronavirus cases in London.

While she assumes the borough’s general affluence has probably helped, even she is unsure of the reasons behind the differences across the capital.

As of Monday, March 6, there were 169 confirmed cases in Kingston, compared to 759 in Brent, which has overtaken Southwark as the borough with the most cases.

“It would be great if I could say with confidence what might be the reasons. I think in reality clearly it’s good news for us, good news for the system and sparing NHS beds. But quite why that is? Some borough has to be lowest, so I’m pleased that it is Kingston, but I don’t think I could genuinely say it’s because we’ve done X or Y,” she said.

“Clearly we are a fairly affluent borough in the main, whether that means people respond to messages and wash their hands and don’t go out so much, or something else. I just don’t think I can say with any confidence. We just happen to be the borough with the lowest rate in London at the moment.”

Nevertheless, she was keen to emphasise that Kingston Hospital is coping well with the outbreak, and local residents seem to be complying with the government guidance.

“In terms of the hospital my understanding is that they are coping well. They clearly have staff absence, partly because they may have people in their household who are unwell. But they have got capacity to take more people in should they need to,” she said.

“But clearly they are only going to be bringing people into hospital if they absolutely have to.

There’s the whole piece of work responding to coronavirus but you will still have people having falls, people having strokes, so looking after people business as usual is still going ahead too, but clearly they have postponed anything that isn’t urgent and necessary.

So outpatients and things like that are being done in a different way. It’s the same with our GP colleagues as well.”

She added: “I’m pleased to say – and I think evidence over the weekend supported that – that people in Kingston are very much following the stay at home advice. Despite the lovely weather we were able to check with both our police colleagues and our staff on the ground that people were doing the social distancing, and were only out for the exercise, they weren’t having picnics in the park. They have really heeded that national message.”

Ms Lidington has worked in Kingston for 14 years, and was around during the Swine Flu pandemic of 2009-2010, which she says helped her prepare for the current situation.

“It was on a smaller-scale, but it tested the system and there is learning with all of these things that you can bring next time around,” she said.

“In terms of planning, we have known that a pandemic would come at some stage. So again, a lot of the training we have had, where we have had exercises to test something, we are now putting our pandemic planning guidance actually into action.

“There’s also a lot of working with partners. The NHS clearly, GPs, but also London ambulance service, fire brigade, the police. It is very much a partnership approach.”

Kingston Council has managed to coordinate a scheme to move plastic goggles from Kingston University and the borough’s secondary schools to the hospital to help protect NHS workers on the frontline.

A team of officers also meet on a daily basis to make important decisions to protect residents in the borough – ensuring that the council continues to run smoothly, even though councillors are not currently having meetings.

“We have something called Gold Command, which I chair, which is when you go into emergency measures under the Civil Contingencies Act, you go into something called Command and Control,” said Iona.

“You have Gold which is the strategic level decision-making, Silver which is the tactical co-ordination and Bronze is more of the delivery. We have a daily Gold meeting where we bring any strategic decisions such as closing of services to Gold.

“We’re also updating our elected members, so I did an all-member briefing last week in a webinar, where they could ask questions because we’re obviously very keen to keep our elected members up to speed as well.

“I think, as always, they are often the eyes and ears on the ground, they know their neighbourhoods and their wards very well. They know people that are more vulnerable and at risk.

“But they are also asking questions – how is this being responded to? How are we getting meals to people? We have a dedicated councillor COVID-19 email where they can send questions through, which will get picked up and fed back.

“Clearly we are trying to respond and convey information to everybody so we don’t get asked the same question 20 times. But I think the inbox is working well and doing the briefings to members is working well too.”

Residents are also receiving daily updates and advice from the council on how they can help their health and wellbeing during isolation through the borough’s voluntary sector website, Connected Kingston.