Cases 'escalating rapidly' in Northumberland - health chief backs restrictions and explains why they were needed in county

Some have been unhappy that Northumberland is included in the North East pandemic restrictions.

The county council’s health and wellbeing committee met today on Monday, September 21, not long after the controversial introduction of additional restrictions in Northumberland and the six other council areas in the LA7.

Providing her update, director of public health Liz Morgan reported that in the two weeks up to August 18, there were 27 cases, followed by 65 in the next fortnight, and then 266 in the 14 days to September 18.

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She said that the latest data suggested an infection rate of 40 per 100,000, which has doubled in the last week to 10 days.

“Across the seven local authorities, County Durham and Northumberland still have the lowest rates, but our rates are escalating rapidly and it will be a couple of weeks before we know if any of the restrictions have had any impact in trying to contain rates at the current level,” she added.

Ms Morgan repeated her warning that while the average age of positive cases had dropped from 50 in June to mid to late 20s five or six weeks later, it is now increasing and ‘that is of concern to us, because obviously it is people in older age groups who are more likely to have long-term conditions and particularly care-home residents who are the most vulnerable, and nationally we are seeing an increase in hospital admissions for Covid-19, which is what we are trying to avoid’.

She also noted that there had been increasing positive tests coming from the NHS, suggesting that more people with Covid-19 are being admitted to hospital, but also a general increase in community transmission.

“What we have now is widespread community transmission,” she added.

In terms of other venues, there have now been 22 Northumberland schools with confirmed Covid-19 cases, while there have been 10 outbreaks since July 10 in county care homes, of which four remain active, with three occurring in the last week.

Cllr Ian Hutchinson raised concerns about the clarity of the new restrictions and doubts that people were following the new rules properly, adding: “It’s a bit of a mess actually.”

Ms Morgan responded: “Communications and how effectively we get those messages across is really important.

“The fact we have had to put further restrictions in place demonstrates that we haven’t been able to maintain those behaviours that prevent transmission.

“So we are now trying to force people to adopt some of the behaviours that we are trying to get them to comply with.”

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