Calm urged as Indian coronavirus variant found in St Helens

Health officials in St Helens are urging people not to panic after the regions detected its first cases of the Indian coronavirus variant.

5 cases have now been detected in the town but it's not though to currently be spreading.

Ruth de Plessis the Public Health Director for St Helens, she told us the cases are likely to have come from elsewhere:

"Of the cases, we know about, a couple of them seem to have brought it into St. Helens from a workplace."

"We've had a few places in the North West which have had quite a lot of cases e.g. Bolton and Blackburn."

"It seems that it is people bringing it into the borough and then we've had a couple of household cases unfortunately where they've passed it on to the people they live with."

"But at this point, we've got no evidence at the moment of any spread within St. Helens, it seems to be contained."

Meanwhile, overall infection rates within St Helens remain low.

16 in every 100,000 are estimated to have the virus in the town, placing its rate below the UK average of 22.

Vaccination rates within St Helens also remain high with nearly three quarters (71.%) of adults now having had their first dose and nearly half (47.6%) having had both doses.

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