Cases rising Concern as area has region’s highest rate of coronavirus

SOUTH Gloucestershire now has the highest coronavirus rate in the South West as health chiefs scramble to understand why.

Director of public health Sara Blackmore revealed the area’s rate of Covid-19 was 148 per 100,000 residents, compared with just 83 for the region as a whole.

But it is still below the average for England of 172 per 100,000 population.

Ms Blackmore told South Gloucestershire health and wellbeing board on Monday that detailed analysis was being carried out to determine the reason infections were increasing again.

She said: “In the last seven days we’ve had 422 cases. Our rate is clearly lower than the rate for England but as it stands now South Gloucestershire has the highest rate in the South West.

“What we’ve seen is very similar to the pattern across the country as the impact of lockdown has reduced rates of Covid, which is clearly positive. We started off by seeing a levelling off and then quite a rapid decline and we are now starting to see an increase in numbers. It is clearly of concern that our rates are starting to rise again.”

She said the public health team had made it a priority this week to find out why.

“This includes some enhanced data analysis to really understand why are our numbers going up now and looking at those areas we need to be focusing on such as community engagement,” she said.

“Some of that work will be focusing on the relaxation of restrictions over Christmas and ensuring everyone has sight of what’s happening with our case numbers and ideal behaviours that need to be in place in relation to managing the risk of transmission.

“We’ve got some extra work going on this week in those high footfall areas, so the capacity of our support marshals is being increased in shopping centres.”

Ms Blackmore said work had been ongoing since the summer on the district’s outbreak management planning.

“Much of that has been reactive work around specific settings such as workplaces, educational settings and also care home settings and high-risk places where there is a high throughput of people.

“That work is continuing in a reactive sense but also in a preventative way, ensuring we are engaging with our communities in a proactive way as well as reacting to outbreaks.

“Last week we put in place a local contact tracing service – we are starting by contacting cases that have been contacted by the National Test and Trace Service.

“There is a positive impact from people receiving a call from a local telephone number, so we are really trying to promote the local approach to contact tracing.”

Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire CCG area director for South Gloucestershire David Jarrett told the remote meeting that GP surgeries were starting to offer the Covid-19 vaccine from this week, with all primary care networks of local surgeries beginning to offer jabs over the next 10 days.