Covid: Newcastle health boss says cases ‘highest in England’

Newcastle is SLOTXO now the biggest Covid hotspot in England, the city’s public health director has said.

It comes as provisional data released by the city council on 2 July showed there were 613 new weekly cases per 100,000 people.

Official government figures up to 27 June have the city’s infection rate as the second highest in England, behind the North West.

But Prof Eugene Milne says the latest figures now place it as the highest.

The government’s website states that Newcastle had an infection rate of 522.1 per 100,000 in the seven days to 27 June, behind the North West area of Hyndburn’s 608.3.

However, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said Prof Milne believes the latest data now places Newcastle as the worst-affected area.

Despite the spike in cases, the greatest in the city since a large-scale outbreak among returning students last October, there has not yet been a significant jump in Covid-related hospitalisations – with cases still concentrated among young people.

Prof Milne said: “We are seeing a different kind of profile of Covid at the moment.

“It is very heavily concentrated in younger adults and I think that kind of separation we have started to see between the way it has spread and its consequences, because of the rollout of the vaccination programme, is really very obvious.

“Although we have those large numbers and there is some increase in the number of people in hospital, it has been a much smaller and quite different kind of impact on health services than we had seen previously.”

According to latest figures up to 29 June, there were 18 people in Newcastle Hospitals with Covid and four of those were on ventilation.

Prof Milne added that he was “certainly not happy” with the increased infection rates, but that a re-imposition of lockdown measures would not be needed as long as pressure on the NHS does not increase.

He added: “I have heard the current situation being described as moving towards a state of managed risk.

“While we are not seeing the pressure on services, I think we can carry on.”