Health chiefs look at how Northumberland is weathering the storm of coronavirus

In a presentation to a remote meeting of Northumberland County Council’s health and wellbeing committee on Tuesday June 2, Liz Morgan said that the Covid-19 outbreak ‘continues to be a rapidly evolving situation, there’s a lot we don’t know, and the science is constantly emerging and that’s subject to interpretation’.

She explained that recent data shows that around one in 400 people in the county are positive at any one time and that antibody testing suggests that one in 15 people have been infected.

As of May 28, there had been 286 coronavirus deaths registered in Northumberland – 29% of the total during that period – with the county’s peak of 45 deaths coming in the week starting April 20.

The figure last week was 13, with Ms Morgan describing the decline as ‘good news’, while noting that each death is a ‘tragic event and we want to see that drop to zero’.

Addressing the ‘spike’ in the county’s cases on Sunday May 31, when the numbers jumped by 68 to 1,006 confirmed cases, she was ‘almost completely confident’ that it was a ‘data anomaly’ following conversations with Public Health England which believes there has been a ‘data dump’ from labs for April and May.

Ms Morgan confirmed that testing and more comprehensive data from that is ‘critical to us being able to manage the pandemic appropriately’.

“As a region, we would like to turn the testing round so that it’s driven by science rather than trying to achieve a certain number of tests,” she said.

“NHS Test and Trace continues to be a work in progress and getting that data flow is critical; data at local-authority level is really limited at the moment.”

Coun Susan Dungworth, leader of the Northumberland Labour group, criticised the Government for announcing major changes in the evenings and without having conversations with councils, saying: “It really isn’t the way to respond to a major public-health issue.”

She asked whether relaxing the restrictions before test and trace was up and running was the right approach.

In her response, Ms Morgan referred to the view taken by the Association of Directors of Public Health (ADPH) – which raised concerns that ‘lifting too many restrictions, too quickly’ risks ‘causing a resurgence of infections’ – but added: “We have always had processes in place to identify cases in high-risk settings.”

Committee members also expressed worries about residents not accessing other necessary healthcare services due to fears over the outbreak.

It was noted that communication with the public was crucial and this would be one area of focus for a new outbreak management board – part of the county council’s response plan.

Claire Riley, director of communications and corporate affairs at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, told the meeting that major areas of concern among consultants include strokes and heart attacks, and mental health.

However, she also said that hospitals in Northumberland and North Tyneside are ‘seeing more and more patients, we are seeing more and more patients accessing normal services’.

Ms Morgan spoke about ‘heart-rending anecdotal stories’ of people who have been to their GP, told they had suffered a heart attack but been too scared to then go for further treatment.