Another life lost to Covid in region
shared with public health directors.
The row has been thrown into sharp relief over the past week due to the government’s imposition of a local lockdown on Leicester.
That decision was taken after it emerged that the number of people testing positive through private facilities in the city was rocketing, although government was not initially sharing that information with Leicester’s public health department, which is tasked with monitoring and containing the situation on the ground.
Greater Manchester’s local authorities believe that if they have access to that detailed information held by central government, they can take action to prevent a Leicester-style lockdown happening.
One source told the M.E.N. that without it, councils everywhere could be ‘sleepwalking into a mess.’
A couple of weeks ago the government did start telling councils how many people in total in their area had tested positive under ‘pillar two.’ That showed Greater Manchester’s numbers were six times higher than they would have otherwise known from their own testing system.
But at that point local public health officials still knew nothing about where exactly those people were, meaning they were unable to tell if there was a problem in a particular part of their borough.
In the wake of Leicester’s lockdown, at the end of last week some further data on positive cases started to come through to local authorities, but there is a lag on the figures and they still only show the first half of the person’s postcode.
It is understood Public Health England is passing detailed ‘pillar two’ data back to central government daily, meaning the real-time data does exist.
Responding to Mr Hancock’s comments, Andy Burnham said: “I listened carefully to the health secretary on Marr this morning and I appreciate his offer of help.
“However, it is not experts we need to understand the data in Greater Manchester - we are lucky to have some of the best public health experts in the country.
“What we need is the real-time, patient-identifiable data that the government receives rather than the limited, anonymised data we are currently getting.
“We also need reliable data from the national contact tracing system.
“One expert told me this week that the lack of patient-specific data was like local detectives being asked to solve crimes without being given the names of any of the victims or suspects.”
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham
ONE more person has died from coronavirus in Greater Manchester.
It means the region’s death toll now stands at 2,080, the latest NHS figures show.
The latest fatality took place at one of the hospitals run by Pennine Acute NHS Trust.
None of the region’s 10 other hospital trusts reported any new deaths.
Nationally, a further 18 people who tested positive for Covid-19 died, bringing the total number of deaths in England’s hospitals to 28,889, NHS England said.
Patients were aged between 54 and 94 years old and all had known underlying health conditions.
GOOD Morning Britain presenter Kate Garraway has revealed her husband Derek Draper has opened his eyes after spending three months in a coma in his battle with coronavirus.
Kate says Derek, 52, a former University of Manchester student, has emerged from a deeper coma into a ‘minimum state of consciousness’ and in a recent breakthrough he has opened his eyes.
In an interview with HELLO! the 53-year-old says doctors are doing everything they can towards his recovery.
She said: “We’re keeping positive and doing everything we can to bring him round.
“The children and I communicate with him every day on FaceTime, while a nurse holds his iPad.
“I really believe he can hear. When medical staff say ‘Good morning, Derek,’ he sometimes opens his eyes.
“We and the doctors are doing everything we can so that he can start to recover.”