Sunderland's health boss explains the figures behind coronavirus fears as case rate remains same for second week

The director of Public Health for Sunderland, has explained the evidence behind Sunderland City Council’s fears the virus is spreading despite case numbers being relatively low.

Gillian Gibson said earlier this week, the city was on a “knife-edge” as new cases had doubled, though the most recent public health figures show the case rate has remained at 2.5 per 100,000 people for two weeks.

Not all data is published

Ms Gibson and her team receive data from a ‘wide variety of different sources’ to pull together a picture of Covid-19 cases in Sunderland, and in recent weeks they have been able to pinpoint figures to exact postcodes and local areas.

She said: “The frequency and quality of the data we receive has greatly improved in the last couple of weeks which helps us pull together a much more comprehensive picture.

“If we start to see a number of cases in a particular postcode or a setting, like a workplace, school or care home, then we can take targeted action to prevent it spreading more widely into the community.”

Delays

Ms Gibson explained that there is still a time lag in the data coming through.

So on Thursday, July 23 when the council issued a warning about the increasing number of cases this was based on testing figures for two 14-day periods from Saturday, June 20, to Friday, July 3, and from Saturday, July 4, to Friday, July 17.

Ms Gibson said: “While the figure of 15 cases may seem relatively small to some, it is the fact that numbers have doubled from seven to 15 in a fortnight that is of concern.”

Coronavirus has not gone away

While life for many of us is beginning to return more to normal, it is really important to remember that the threat of Covid-19 hasn’t gone away, the council says.

Ms Gibson said: “Many of us will have spotted people forgetting to follow social distancing as lockdown restrictions have continued to ease, but Covid- 19 is still very much with us.

"It’s already taken the lives of over 300 people in Sunderland and changed forever the lives of many more.

“That is why it’s vital that we all carry on observing two-metre social distancing where we can, continue washing our hands with soap regularly for more than 20 seconds and stay at home as much as possible.”

Local lockdown fears

Local authorities have been given powers to impose local lockdowns including school and workplace closures to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Sunderland City Council hope that it will not come to this, but say that people must follow social distancing guidelines to ensure no local lockdown is needed.

Ms Gibson said: “We are doing everything we can to make sure that the figures, while still small, don’t continue to rise and take us to a position where we have to consider the kind of measures we have seen introduced elsewhere.

"But we can only do that if we all work together to defeat this virus.”

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