"Encouraging" fall in Doncaster Covid cases after record high
Cases in the town recently reached their highest since the start of the pandemic
Public health bosses in Doncaster say it's "enouraging" Covid cases are now falling, after reaching their highest level in the whole pandemic recently.
In the past few weeks the case rate in the town's been more than double what it was during the second wave in January.
The weekly average almost reached 1,000 per 100,000.
But Clare Henry - who leads the public heath Covid team for Doncaster Council - says the situation's now getting a lot better:
"We have started to see those cases descrease quite significantly. That might be in line with schools closing over the last week or so. There are still significant amount of cases coming through so we're not out of the woods yet but it has been better than we have seen.
"Those figures are the highest that we've seen in Doncaster since the beginning of the pandemic. What we have seen is that that's not translated to issues in the hospital. We have started to see some numbers within the hospital but not as significant as we saw at the beginning of the pandemic."
The town's been getting help from the national Test and Trace team because of the high numbers in the past few weeks.
Doncaster has its own local system of contact tracing but cases numbers got so high the national team were called in to help with the demand.
The council's now letting people know they might be contacted by either and told to isolate.
Hannah Wild from Doncaster’s Public Health team said:
“We all know that test and trace has played a really important role, along with asymptomatic testing and vaccinations, in reducing the spread of coronavirus in our community.
“It is important that people in the borough know that they could receive a call from either a local number or from the national team. Answering the call and providing details of close contacts is a really good way to help reduce the number of people infected with the virus.
“Please remember that contact tracing is anonymous, sometimes we are speaking to people who have tested positive, and they don’t want to give details of people they have had close contact with. This might be because they feel guilty that someone will have to isolate or because they know that the person might struggle financially if they are not able to work.
“Close contacts will not be told who the positive case is, and we are there to support people both emotionally and financially through the isolation period by providing details of the help and support that is available."