The congregation for this morning’s Sung Eucharist service at Ripon Cathedral, was considerably smaller than the previous two Sundays in Lent, as the coronavirus crisis continues to impact on events that normally attract large gatherings.

The turn out was around half the usual size of the congregation and also saw wardens who were welcoming church goers, saying that they could not hand out the order of service booklets, as they had to avoid hand to hand contact.Instead, the wardens pointed to the booklets and invited attendees to pick them up for themselves.



The 10.30am service at the Cathedral is invariably the most well attended of the week, with a steady stream of church goers heading down Kirkgate, or from the nearby Cathedral and Market Place car parks to take their seats in the ancient building.

Meanwhile one Harrogate church turned to technology to get access to its parishioners. This morning's Parish Mass at St Wilfred's Church on Duchy Road, was streamed and then posted on Facebook for worshipers who had stayed at home.

Supermarkets continue to see people rush to stock up

Not far away from the Cathedral at the Ripon ALDI store, a queue of cars backed up onto the road as shoppers looking to stock up, waited for parking spaces to become free in a car park packed with vehicles.

Yesterday many shelves were getting empty by 1.30pm and large multi-packs of toilet roll were proving a popular buy. Packs of Paracetamol and Ibuprofen were proving difficult to get hold of at chemists and other stores around Ripon while all types of hand-wash and particularly sanitiser with an alcohol content of sufficient strength to kill the coronavirus, are being bought as soon as they are put on the shelves of Boots in Market Place and Day Lewis Pharmacy in North Street.

At Day Lewis, the pharmacist put up a sign on the shop door saying We Have No Hand Gel, because the pharmacy has been dealing with up to 100 people a day coming in to ask and that was disrupting the serving of prescriptions and other products.

The shop eventually received a small supply of alcohol-based hand sanitiser and the nine bottles costing £9.95 that were received, were sold before midday. The pharmacist points out: “We ordered 60 bottles, but it is in short supply everywhere.”