Surge in Covid cases could be temporary

CASES of coronavirus in Hungerford were surging during January.

But further analysis has shown the spike may have been temporary.

Town mayor Helen Simpson told a virtual, full town council meeting on Monday: “There have been a number of concerns from members of the public who are seeing numbers going up quite significantly in Hungerford.

“It looked quite scary and daunting.

“I wanted to learn about this.” Consequently, Mrs Simpson raised the matter with the district council, which responded with the following message: “In light of your concerns around the rising number of cases in Hungerford: the 31 positive cases in the seven days to January 21...the Hungerford rate per 100,000... is significantly higher than the West Berkshire average.

“The total case rate since the beginning of November had been significantly below the West Berkshire average.

“Eight of the cases within the last week have been associated with a recent outbreak in a high-risk setting, and when we remove this from the total number, this brings the Hungerford case rates for the week ending January 21 more in line with the West Berks average.”

It added: “We also looked at removing Pillar 1 tests from the data (those individuals that tend to have contracted Covid within a healthcare setting eg hospital), so we can just focus on community transmission.

“When we do this, it further decreases the gap between Hungerford and the West Berkshire average.

“In light of this, it appears that Hungerford is not seeing a significant growth in numbers and, having looked at the most recent few days, although incomplete, it would indicate that the case increase in Hungerford is temporary.

“However, we will continue to monitor the numbers.”