Covid: Newcastle health boss says cases 'highest in England'

The spike in cases is the greatest since an outbreak among returning students last October

Newcastle is now the biggest Covid hotspot in England, the city's public health director has said.

It comes as provisional data released by the city council on 2 July showed there were 613 new weekly cases per 100,000 people.

Official government figures up to 27 June have the city's infection rate as the second highest in England, behind the North West.

But Prof Eugene Milne says the latest figures now place it as the highest.

The government's website states that Newcastle had an infection rate of 522.1 per 100,000 in the seven days to 27 June, behind the North West area of Hyndburn's 608.3.

However, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said Prof Milne believes the latest data now places Newcastle as the worst-affected area.

Despite the spike in cases, the greatest in the city since a large-scale outbreak among returning students last October, there has not yet been a significant jump in Covid-related hospitalisations - with cases still concentrated among young people.

Prof Milne said: "We are seeing a different kind of profile of Covid at the moment.

"It is very heavily concentrated in younger adults and I think that kind of separation we have started to see between the way it has spread and its consequences, because of the rollout of the vaccination programme, is really very obvious.

"Although we have those large numbers and there is some increase in the number of people in hospital, it has been a much smaller and quite different kind of impact on health services than we had seen previously."

According to latest figures up to 29 June, there were 18 people in Newcastle Hospitals with Covid and four of those were on ventilation.

Prof Milne added that he was "certainly not happy" with the increased infection rates, but that a re-imposition of lockdown measures would not be needed as long as pressure on the NHS does not increase.

He added: "I have heard the current situation being described as moving towards a state of managed risk.

"While we are not seeing the pressure on services, I think we can carry on."

Analysis

Rob England - BBC England data unit

Coronavirus cases across the North East of England have doubled to some of the highest levels seen in the pandemic.

The delta variant has caused infections to rise again to levels first seen in late December, before the peak in early January.

In Newcastle, that increase is particularly pronounced, with hotspots in student areas such as Jesmond. On 30 June, the city recorded one of its highest numbers of daily infections of the pandemic.

On a more positive note, a trend seems to be emerging from the age of people catching the virus that suggests the vaccine rollout is working.

The majority of cases are concentrated in the people aged 20-24, which is broadly in line with the rest of the country, with far fewer cases in over-50s, where vaccine coverage is high.

But among people in their late 40s, first dose coverage in the city has dropped well below the national average, which is possibly why there is a slightly wider spread of cases among the under-50s age groups than elsewhere.

This latest surge doesn't seem to have affected hospital admissions yet, with the city's local NHS trust only seeing one additional patient in the last week - though it may be too soon to tell whether that link has been fully broken.