DESPITE the latest Covid 19 outbreaks and subsequent lockdowns, the Myall University of the Third Age has managed to keep its members connected and involved in community activities by Zoom or by email.

Choir members have been practising at home and Babara Lyle, the Myall U3A Choir Director, has been keeping in touch with choir members to encourage them to keep singing.

After all, singing is one of the best ways to reduce stress and to engage with the community.

Singing is known to be healing for ‘body and soul’.

Other Myall U3A co-ordinators have also done a wonderful job during the Covid lockdown in keeping up the morale of community members who are often isolated at home and unsure about the latest rules regarding community lockdown.

Due to so many enquiries from the community about Covid Rules, the Myall U3A Treasurer Roger Digby was appointed by the committee to act as Covid Co-Ordinator.

Roger said that he welcomed the chance to study Health Regulations and all the rules published on the NSW Health Website so that he could develop a plan for all our classes to follow.

Roger said, “Initially, safe strategies such as limited class sizes, hand sanitising social distancing etc. worked well until June 21st when the Delta strain broke through all the defences in Sydney and started to spread into Rural NSW.”
On Saturday, August 15 all of Regional NSW went into lockdown with just three hours notice.

Roger said that NSW Health Staff must have worked through the night, as next morning the rules were all clearly set out on the website, but much more complicated than before.

First you had to identify the set of rules that applied to the MidCoast Local Government Area, then sort through all the definitions, exceptions and exemptions to see what you had to do to go about your life.

Roger decided to offer Myall U3A members a simple summary of the main points which the Myall U3A thought would meet the needs of most of our members.

He was delighted that many members reported that they were pleased to be offered this simple summary.

All summaries of the rules or advice about the rules was based solely on information published on the NSW website.

Roger and the Myall U3A committee have been very encouraged that members have been very understanding of the need to keep to the rules.

Roger said that informal surveys suggest that our vaccination rates around our area are very high and well done everyone for playing such an important and supportive role in keeping our community safe and keeping Covid at bay.

 

By Myall U3A