Claims that Sheppey's coronavirus-hit jails may be to blame for London being forced into Tier 3 have been dismissed by a prison union official.

Mike Rolfe, the founder of the Criminal Justice Workers' Union which represents 450 staff across the Island's three prisons, said it was probably the other way round.

He said: "It is more likely the disease began to spread in Swale following the holiday season with many Londoners visiting the location, as well as schools returning. I don’t believe the current increase in cases in London can be directly attributable to outbreaks in Swale or indeed the Sheppey prisons.

"On the whole, outbreaks have been effectively managed in prisons with swift action taken to contain incidents and self-isolate staff and prisoners who would have come into contact with positive cases of Covid 19.

"I think the capital is looking for someone to blame if it has to go back into a lockdown. I don’t believe it would be fair to blame Swale residents.

"There are multiple reasons why the spread of Covid 19 is occurring in London, not least their own inability to follow restrictions and measures that have been put into place."

He was speaking after an article in today's Daily Telegraph suggested the spike in cases in the capital could be traced to the Island's prisons as Swale was in a "commuter corridor" taking infection into south east London.

It quoted Mr Rolfe and also Professor Jackie Cassell, who was brought up on the Island and is now a public health expert at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. She has been studying why Swale has England's highest rate of infection compared to other areas along the south east coast such as Worthing, which has the lowest rate.

She told the Telegraph the outbreak in the prisons, which hold up to 3,000 men, was “by no means a major driver but I suspect it was a catalyst” for the disease spreading.

Experts have been trying to work out why the borough, which covers Sheppey, Sittingbourne and Faversham, and is next to Medway, which has the second highest rate in England, has been hit so hard.

Professor Cassell, who has come up with her own safety guide for a Covid Christmas in her blog, says the cause is down to years of deprivation.

She said: “Put simply, far fewer people in Swale than in Worthing are able to protect themselves by staying at home in spacious properties. There are a lot of factors, all small in themselves, but when dealing with a disease that is hard to prevent in small households where it is difficult to socially distance, this can create a situation that is ready to burn.”

Once again Swale, and east Sheppey in particular which includes the Island's three prisons at Eastchurch and a number of holiday parks at Leysdown, has the highest rate in England.

On December 4, Swale had an overall rate of 566 per 100,000 residents compared with 290 for Kent and 155 for England. Worthing, by contrast, had maintained its low summer rate of 24 compared to 61 for West Sussex as a whole.

Professor Cassell, 57, blamed Swale's sudden surge on overcrowded substandard housing, large numbers of vulnerable people needing regular visits and contact from carers and manufacturing and warehouse workers who cannot work from home.

She said: "I can categorically state that this was just waiting to happen. If you pack people into tight terraced houses like in the centre of Sheerness or Sittingbourne and in parts of Kemsley then this disease will spread much more easily. These towns are just like Liverpool. And, of course, the prison numbers are included in the figures.

"We have seen how quickly what was at first a concentrated epidemic in the less well off parts of Swale spread across the whole borough. Younger people, poorer people, and those in more cramped housing are unable to protect themselves from exposure to Covid-19 both at home and at work."

She added: "One senior public health official I was talking to recently said there was a feeling people were not following the rules. But this is absolutely not helpful advice. If you are living in a densely packed terraced house with children or have to share a car to go to work then it is difficult to isolate. And if your elderly mother can't get out of a bath you are going to help her."

She said 3% of Swale residents gave more than 50 hours of unpaid healthcare a week. "It is hardly surprising Swale is in the state it is in. It does not need dangerous rhetoric to slag it off. It is outrageous there is such an apparent lack of awareness about this."

On September 26, only one of the six wards on Sheppey had more than three cases of Covid-19. A week later, all six had at least three cases and by November 14 the entire Island had a rate of more than 650 per 100,000 people.

Mr Rolfe said the jails had managed the outbreaks well but mass testing at the start of November found 40% (116 prisoners) of prisoners on one wing at HMP Elmley had the virus.

Up to 50 staff at any one time at Elmley also had Covid-19, he said, because of the difficulty of containing the disease in a prison even with social distancing and masks.

He added: “It is likely the outbreaks in the prison were because staff brought the virus in, rather than prisoners transmitting the virus from court or other methods. Then staff who picked up the virus through their work took it home to family and friends, adding to the spread in the community."

He admitted staff had complained that personal protection equipment (PPE) and sanitation areas supplied had been inadequate but added that the nature of the job made it impossible to safely socially distance from prisoners and other staff.

He said: “This is mainly because of the physical design of prisons and the requirement to enter the personal space of prisoners on a regular basis. There is a belief among staff that catching Covid is inevitable; it’s just a matter of when."

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