McDonald’s branch closes amid virus outbreak

houses without social distancing.

However, public health figures spoken to by the M.E.N. here believe the situation is not quite that straightforward.

Certainly, they agree, household to household transmission is likely to be a major factor and potentially the main one.

But when Greater Manchester’s leaders reviewed the figures last Wednesday - the ones that would ultimately lead government to impose the new lockdown restrictions just over 24 hours later - they concluded a major problem was young people meeting without social distancing.

Andy Burnham said at the time that raves and other gatherings had ‘undoubtedly’ played a role, but there is also a concern about younger people working in pubs that haven’t got sufficient safety measures in place.

“I don’t think we could dismiss spread in pubs at all,” says one official.

“It all depends how Covid-safe the pubs are and how Covid-safe the punters are. And raves are definitely a factor.

“The problem is the folks who aren’t Covid-safe in one setting tend to behave in the same way everywhere, unless the environment is such that they have no choice but to wear a mask, physically distance, etc.”

Is this just down to increased testing?

One of the harder questions to answer, because of a lack of published data.

Internally, Public Health England does measure the ‘positivity rate’ of testing numbers in local authority areas - in other words, the percentage of people tested that turn out to have Covid.

It then rates those percentages as red, amber or green.

The M.E.N. managed to get hold of the current positivity rate for Manchester, for example, which is going up.

Currently the percentage of tests coming back positive in the city is 5.2, up from 3.1pc in the middle of last week.

That places it in the ‘amber’ category of risk, according to the government (the ‘red’ threshold is 7.5pc).

That may still sound a low number, but one insider explains it like this.

“If it was amber and going in the right direction, that would be one thing. But the positivity rate is amber and going in the wrong direction. Yes, we are testing more. That’s undoubtedly the case. “But by and large, if the virus was diminishing then testing more should have a lower positivity rate. The fact it’s the other way around is bad news.”

More than one senior figure believes one answer would be to publish all such data held by Public Health England, as well as the thresholds for when they get worried and a detailed explanation of what measures they would expect to bring in as a result.

A McDonald’s restaurant has been temporarily closed after a coronavirus outbreak among staff.

Five workers at the branch in Stockport town centre have tested positive for Covid-19, McDonald’s have confirmed.

The Wellington Road South restaurant was closed on Sunday.

A McDonald’s spokesperson said: “We have proactively decided to temporarily close our Stockport restaurant as a precautionary measure following a rise of Covid-19 cases in the local area with five of our employees testing positive.”

The latest figures from Public Health England show

Stockport’s coronavirus infection rate more than trebled from 8.2 infections per 100,000 people on July 22 to 26 per 100,000 people a week later.

Stockport MP Navendu Mishra told the M.E.N. he had written to McDonald’s to raise his concerns about the outbreak after being contacted by worried members of staff.