EVERY Thursday evening people from all over Ludlow and south Shropshire, in Tenbury and the Teme Valley as well as across the country gather in their windows or gardens to applause NHS workers on the frontline in the war against coronavirus.

The medical teams of doctors and nurses are doing an amazing job helping those that are struck down not just with Covid-19 but with other illnesses that cannot wait until the current danger is passed.

This includes the GPs that never quite know what they will come up against.

Many dentists still work providing at least emergency treatment.

Behind the medics sit a team of health workers including the cleaners and maintenance staff as well as those who keep the NHS fed either in hospitals or other places of work.

Easily forgotten are the backroom and administrative staff who order everything from the toilet rolls to the test kits, at least if the government has made them available. The tests do not do themselves and there are the people working round the clock in laboratories.

Then there are the ambulance crews and the paramedics taking sick people to hospital.

In the community, pharmacists are making sure that people can get medicines and other treatments.

Workers do hard and vital work in care homes and the homes of the vulnerable.

Helping to keep things going are the other emergency service workers. Fires do not stop happening because there is a medical emergency.

Funeral staff have to try to offer compassion and support at what are always difficult times but even more so now. This also applies to clergymen and women as well as leaders of other faiths.

Workers that have really been on the frontline in this crisis have been the people that work in the supermarkets and other shops who have often had to do their jobs in the face of abuse from frustrated and angry shoppers.

Getting food and other supplies have been the work of drivers from those in white vans that deliver parcels to the men and women who bring what is needed to shops as well as the fuel that keeps us on the road.

The food and other essentials do not appear by magic but only because of the work of people in factories and on farms.

Mainstream schools have shut down but there are teachers and other education workers along with social workers making sure that the children of essential workers and those young people who are vulnerable have somewhere to go.

In communities individuals and groups like ‘Pulling Together Ludlow’ and Team Tenbury are doing their bit.

Many journalists continue to work making sure that vital reliable and trustworthy information is available at a time when there is so much inaccurate information on social media.