A YEAR to the day after Cumbria confirmed its first case of Covid-19, the county’s most senior public health chief has paid tribute to the county’s “astonishing” response. But Public Health Director Colin Cox says the pandemic’s impact has been “devastating,” with 1,400 lives lost. This is in spite of the heroic efforts if front-line NHS staff in hospitals such as Carlisle’s Cumberland Infirmary, West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven, and Furness General Hospital in Barrow. But as a further Covid-19 patient death was confirmed by the hospital trust in the north of the county, Mr Cox said it was imperative that people do not begin to abandon lockdown restrictions.