Spikes in city’s positive tests are to be expected says health chief

Spikes in the number of people in Peterborough testing positive for Covid-19 are to be expected, according to the city’s director of public health, as she explained why there are fluctuations in the figures.

Peterborough remains on a Government list as an area of concern as it remains above the national average for the number of cases per100,000 of population.

On Friday, the city’s rolling seven-day rate of new cases of Covid-19 per 100,000 of population was 14.3 (with 29 new cases), compated to 23.7 (48 new cases) the previous week.

Explaining why Peterborough was seeing fluctuations, Dr Liz Robin, said: “It’s what we expect – the seven day average will change quite often.

“Sometimes organisations do testing of people who don’t have symptoms. Sometimes care homes do that – they test all staff and residents. We’re also working with businesses to test all their staff.

“We’re getting ups and downs in data but not in community transmissions. But sometimes when you do a big screening you see figures go up. You need to expect fluctuations in the figures. Some of that is chance and some of that is because organisations are doing widespread testing which shows positive cases. If we do more testing, which we want to do, it helps stop bigger rises, but we will see these peaks every so often.”

In Peterborough and Cambridgeshire, the local outbreak control plan is being updated over the next fortnight with councils now able to utilise new lockdown powers from the Government. Dr Robin said there has been no need yet to bring in any additional restrictions for the city.

She said: “We are currently an area of concern which means the Government is aware we have higher rate than average, but we are leading the response locally by doing good work with communities and increased testing.

“We’re not at the point where we’re expecting to have to change the rules, to be an area of intervention or have to do a significant lockdowns. That can change and we’ve seen other areas change very quickly, but today that’s not what I would think with where our figures are. But we are planning because we’ve seen things change rapidly in other areas.”