East Yorkshire COVID Situation Remains "Finely Balanced"

East Riding Council’s public health boss has said suggestions from the prime minister that coronavirus restrictions could soon end sends the wrong message as the local situation remains finely balanced.

East Riding Council’s Public Health Director Andy Kingdom said he was surprised at Prime Minister Boris Johnson signalling all remaining coronavirus restrictions could cease by the end of this month.

He added it risked giving the impression that the pandemic was coming to an end despite case numbers still being among the highest since it began in March 2020.

It comes as 2,121 new coronavirus cases were recorded in the East Riding in the week up to Tuesday, February 8, down from 2,996 the previous week.

The rolling infection rate fell from 873 to 618 cases per 100,000 people during the same period.

Mr Kingdom said potential moves to end restrictions came as case rates among the elderly were falling but slowly, keeping hospital patient numbers high.

He added people in the East Riding should consider continuing to wear masks and distance even if restrictions end to keep infection numbers down and ease pressure on health services.

Mr Kingdom said:

“I was surprised by the prime minister’s suggestion that coronavirus restrictions could be lifted entirely at the end of this month.

“He has the best people around him and he and his advisers often get data before local public health teams do, but I haven’t seen anything in the data I’ve looked at which suggests we’re in a position to end restrictions.

“At this time I wouldn’t want to send the message that everything’s okay, signalling that people can go back to work even if they’re infected is the wrong message.

“It’s a finely balanced situation at the moment.

“The tug of war between us and virus is coming our way but some of the figures are a bit contradictory.

“A lot of the country has seen falls similar to us, normally the drops would make me happy but the question is which groups are falling the most?

“If we look at the over 60s, their case rate is still sitting at around 300 per 100,000 after falling from around 80 cases a day to 60 during January.

“That’s not a big drop, especially compared to rates for the under 50s and school age children which have fallen quite a bit.

“The rates we’d really want to see falling are those for the older population and we’re not seeing them drop as quickly as I’d like.

“And the other issue is that is everyone getting tested? Probably not.

“So the official numbers don’t really reflect the total level of infection, it’s probably much higher.

“If you look at hospital admissions, there was about 117 patients in Hull Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill Hospital at the end of last week.

“It’s bounced around that figure for a while now, in late December we had around 50 cases in our hospitals, so we’re still seeing more than double that.

“Across Yorkshire and the Humber around 10 per cent beds in hospitals are being taken up by coronavirus patients, those are still high numbers.

“The amount of people in intensive care with coronavirus is averaging around five and we’re still seeing four to five deaths every week.

“Part of the reason hospital cases are still high is because case rates among the elderly haven’t fallen as quickly.

“The position with staffing and absences in hospitals is a lot better now, there’s more back at work but issues with isolations aren’t over yet.

“What’s happening is that as people mix more and as restrictions continue to ease with more moving away from working from home, the virus is able to find more people to infect.

“The vaccines work well at stopping people from becoming seriously ill but they’re not so great at stopping transmissions.

“So there’s a pool of infection still available and if people go out they’re more likely to come across someone whose carrying the virus.

“Those aged 60 and over were the last to get infected in this wave, so their numbers will be the last to fall.

“That’s keeping the hospital numbers high because they’re among the groups which are more likely to develop complications and need medical treatment.

“Although they’re also more likely to wear face masks and take precautions, it will need other people to continue being considerate by also following the measures for a little bit longer to keep case rates falling.

“If other people don’t do that then it puts them at risk, and there’s plenty of other vulnerable people around who will still be worried about catching the virus.

“And we’re still seeing some of the highest levels of cases now than we’ve seen at any point in the pandemic, so those groups will be worried about whether it’s safe to mix in wider society.

“Having said that I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re heading in the right direction.

“Public health teams will be slowly dialling down our efforts on coronavirus, but in the meantime we should walk down the stairs, not jump.”