Figures reveal town’s virus death hotspot
CASTLETON has had more COVID-19-related deaths than any other area in Rochdale, figures show.
According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), there were 23 deaths in the area between March and May this year - with 70pc of these occurring during April.
The figures seem significantly higher than in the second and third worst affected neighbourhoods, with Deeplish and Norden recording 15 and 11 deaths respectively.
Sara Rowbotham, Rochdale council’s cabinet member for health and wellbeing, said the reasons for Castleton being hit so hard would only be properly understood after an in-depth ‘deep dive’ analysis of the data.
But she suggests its ageing population may have been a contributing factor.
“That’s just my sense,” she said.
“I often think of Castleton as being a place with much more of an older population.
“I can only think that may be why it was disproportionately impacted by the virus.”
She hopes for more granular, ‘narrowed down’ data now being made available will be helpful in preventing any localised outbreaks of the virus, as lockdown measures are further eased.
But the health chief who is also deputy council leader - urged people to treat the figures with caution.
She added: “I would not want Castleton to become a bit like one of those places in the plague with a big red cross on the door and everybody had to stay away.
“You can see how that could be easily misinterpreted.
“That’s what worries me about very localised data, because if it’s Castleton now it will be Bangladeshi people next.”
Andrea Fallon, the council’s director of public health said every death in the borough was a tragedy and the authority was working ‘tirelessly’ to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on residents.
She added: “We are pleased that the number of cases, hospital admissions and deaths continues to fall in our borough.
“Given the various sources of data it is hard to comment on one set in isolation.
We continue to review all of the data available to us in order to understand what is taking place across the borough and make sure our services respond to this.”