Newcastle Covid Update
“We’re going in the right direction”
This is the view of a Newcastle health boss who has told councillors that coronavirus cases are falling in the city.
Eugene Milne, director of public health, was speaking at a meeting of Newcastle Council’s health scrutiny committee on Thursday.
He said: “The numbers at the moment are going down. The rate in Newcastle as of yesterday was 316 per 100,000 per week.
“That’s lower than the North East, lower than the LA7 and lower than the English average at the moment.”
Central Government figures show a 22.9% drop in Covid-19 cases in the city in the seven days ending November 6.
Prof Milne continued: “Across the major age bands we’re seeing falls at all ages. I’m pleased to say that we’re now seeing a fall in the over 60s.
“What we’re really seeing over the last few weeks is initially a fall in the 0-15 age band, which peaked around October 22 and has been falling since then.
“And a subsequent fall in what I would suggest we think of as parents and then grandparents and I think we have seen that kind of cascade through the population.”
Prof Milne also pointed to the very high Covid vaccine uptake in Newcastle’s students.
He said: “The 16-29 age band had fallen some time before that because of the roll out of the vaccine, which we have pointed out before is at very high levels amongst students.
“I have seen a report recently confirming the figures that we have received that the uptake of vaccines amongst students is round about 90%, so that’s really impacting along with the prior exposure in that age group.
“At the moment we are going in the right direction. In terms of vaccine rollout, first doses in the city at the moment are at 214,000 and second doses are at 192,000.
“In terms of variants we’re still seeing almost entirely Delta variant. There are some small numbers of the Delta sub variant that have been detected across the North East.
“It seems to behave in very much the same way as Delta, it doesn’t seem to be particularly different at all.”
Prof Milne said that the vaccination booster programme, for people most at risk from Covid-19 who have had their second dose of at least six months ago, is currently at around 58% uptake, but he expects improvements in the booking system to increase this.
“That will go higher,” he said.
“Part of the reason it’s at that level is that in the first weeks we had slower uptake than would have been expected from the numbers who had the vaccine because of the speed at which it got going.
“And also because of the fact that until the beginning of this week you weren’t able to book your booster until you reached six months.
“That’s been changed so that when you reach five months out from your second dose you can now book for when you reach the six months point.
“That should accelerate the uptake and I think it will increase those numbers.”
He admitted that vaccinations among younger teenagers is “difficult to track”, but estimated that across the region just over half of that age group had been jabbed.
He added: “Among the 12-15s it’s actually quite difficult to track because we don’t have as clear data on that as we would like for the city.
“What I can tell you is that the uptake in the primary delivery which is the school immunisation service is now around about 30% of the eligible population.
“There is an unknown number who have taken up the vaccine through the back-up system the offer through NGPS and so on.
“However, looking across the board for the North East levels, if you take both together we’re at about 51% of the total 12-15 population in the region.
“Now these are estimates to a degree but in terms of the ballpark figure that around half of that target population seems to have had a vaccine. That’s probably a reasonable reliable ballpark figure to be thinking about.
“That’s really encouraging. I think that will start fairly rapidly to feed into an affect within the teenage years similar to the one we have seen in the 16 to 29 year-olds. We should start to see that working through.”