Door-to-door deliveries of the Wanstead Village Directory have been suspended because of Coronavirus problems – copies will instead be available solely through display stands in the Co-op, Tesco and now also at Waitrose and Sainsbury’s in South Woodford. They may also be available at M&S soon.
Editor Lee Marquis said:
The reasons for doing this are twofold. Most importantly, we all have a responsibility to adhere to social distancing guidelines, so I believe it would be wrong to ask my delivery team to walk the streets of Wanstead and risk interacting with others. In addition to this, a recent study by the US National Institutes of Health (as reported by the BBC here) has found the virus can survive on cardboard for up to 24 hours. So I can’t, in all good conscience, allow our magazines to be posted through letterboxes on a mass scale when there is a potential risk that this may be contributing to the spread of the virus. Instead, we will allow those who wish to pick up a copy to do so from our stands (by virtue of our normal processes, a period of at least 24 hours will elapse between our magazines being packed at the printers and placed in our stands).