East Riding Covid-19 death rates 'likely' to remain same until mid-February
Coronavirus mortality rates will likely remain around their current level until mid-February, according to East Riding Council’s public health lead who spoke following the most deaths recorded in one day.
Coronavirus mortality rates will likely remain around their current level until mid-February, according to East Riding Council’s public health lead who spoke following the most deaths recorded in one day.
East Riding Council Public Health Director Andy Kingdom said those dying in local hospitals caught coronavirus around the end of December and the beginning of January.
He added that meant the effects of the current lockdown announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday, January 4 had not yet fed through to fatality figures.
The director’s comments come as 18 deaths were recorded in Hull Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill Hospital yesterday (Thursday, January 21), the highest daily figure since the pandemic began.
Mr Kingdom also said tests on workers deemed critical to the vaccination roll out were finding lower numbers of cases than expected, showing current measures were working.
He added the next priority group could soon be vaccinated as all care home residents are expected to be vaccinated by Sunday, but warned against complacency among the public.
The director said:
“Since last week things have been slowly improving, we’re seeing a downward trend in infections across all age groups from about 200 per 100,000 to the 170’s.
“Rather than having 700 new infections a week in the East Riding we’re now getting about 550 but it’s not happening as quickly as we’d like, it’s not the halving we really wanted.
“Deaths here are high but they’re not as high as other parts of the country, we’re currently seeing between 100 and 110 deaths a week whereas in normal times we’d expect about 80.
“About 35 of the current total are coronavirus deaths so they’re higher but they’re not double or treble.
“If we were getting 50 or 100 deaths above the weekly average then we’d be really worried, other parts of the country are going to see more than that.
“But there’s also a lot of life saving happening because doctors and nurses have more effective ways of treating people now than they did earlier on.
“The high number of coronavirus patients in hospitals isn’t translating to as many deaths as we thought they would, but we’re still seeing too many.”
Mr Kingdom said the roll out of vaccines to care homes was keeping local outbreaks at bay and that few cases had been seen so far in schools.
The director said: “When we’ve seen cases in schools it’s tended to come from home transmissions or a staff member has brought it in from outside.
“That’s partly because we’re usually a few weeks behind the national picture, so the lockdown came in before infections could spread more widely.
“The East Riding’s also protected by being more rural and coastal, and when we’ve had local outbreaks we’ve been able to get on top of them quickly.
“Our number one concern was our high number of care homes where we’ve had quite a few deaths and our higher than average elderly population.
“We’ve vaccinated a few of the homes to 100 per cent now, across all 140 it’s at about three quarters of residents and two thirds of staff.”
Mr Kingdom said local vaccination roll outs more generally were progressing well, with a new site is set to open in Hornsea to close a gap found there.
He added residents should continue to wait for the NHS to contact them for a vaccine and that the service could help with transport issues if they ask.
“About two thirds of the over 80’s have been vaccinated, once that’s finished then we can move down to the 70 pluses and the clinically extremely vulnerable.
“But we don’t want to rush ahead, we need to be at a similar pace to other parts of the country otherwise the virus will get escape routes.
“The situation with the pandemic generally is in our hands, the vaccination will get us out of this in the longer term but we could still take wrong steps now.
“People have options and choices to make but if they carry on doing the basics then we could be one of the first areas out of restrictions when they’re lifted.”