Moray Covid situation ‘rapidly deteriorating’
health officials are considering door-to-door Covid-19 testing in Elgin amid a “rapidly “deteriorating” spike in cases that has seen Moray rise to the highest case rates in Scotland.
NHS Grampian warned Moray is now seeing “uncontrolled, sustained community transmission” of the virus, and an incident management team (IMT) has been set up in an effort to halt the spread.
Elgin is the epicentre of the spread, but NHS Grampian warned cases are rising in surrounding areas, including Lossiemouth, Buckie and Keith.
IMT chairman and deputy director of Public Health at NHS Grampian Chris Littlejohn said: “In Moray we are now seeing uncontrolled, sustained community transmission, current restrictions not are containing it, and the situation is rapidly deteriorating.
"We are seeing hospitalisations from this – including in the under 50s – and we will see deaths, if the situation is not brought under control.”
It comes after health chiefs warned locals to “self-isolate or be isolated” on Wednesday, after reports of locals not adhering to Covid-19 advice.
Moray currently has the highest rates of Covid in the country, at around 81 cases per 100,000 people, double the next highest rate in East Dumbartonshire.
There have now been 51 caspublic
es linked to Elgin Academy, with around a quarter of the 1,000 pupils told to self-isolate.
It is understood that these cases are linked to community transmission, rather than a single outbreak at the school.
The opening of a new mobile testing unit at the school, which had been set for next week, has been brought forward to this morning .
The unit will provide PCR testing for staff and pupils on school days and be open to the public during the weekend.
Further testing units are set to open around the region in the coming days, and Mr Littlejohn said NHS Grampian is “heavily considering” door-todoor testing.
“We are writing to businesses encouraging them to support us in getting the workto
force tested, we are deploying extra mobile testing units and we are continuing with our enhanced testing in the region,” he said.
“As a next step we are heavily considering door-to-door testing in Elgin and look at how we can facilitate that.”
“Since April 10 we have seen 210 cases in Moray. More than half of those have come in the last eight days alone. This is a rapidly accelerating situation.
“Test positivity in Moray is at 3.2 per cent - across Scotland that figure is close to just 1 per cent - and the R-rate in Moray is at 1.8, so every person in Moray that becomes infected is, on average, passing it on to two other people.
“Analytics have shown us many people in the region have returned to their workplaces, rather than working from home. It remains the advice people should work from home where possible and we really need people to do that, where they can.”
Health bosses at Dr Gray’s Hospital, in Elgin, said earlier this week that local knowledge indicated some people were choosing to break the rules by entering other people’s houses and organising gatherings.
“Anecdotally we’re being made of aware of people either with symptoms or who have been asked to self-isolate by contract tracers not doing so,” said Jamie Hogg, divisional clinical director at Dr Gray’s Hospital.
Meanwhile, one leading scientist yesterday said health experts “haven’t seen any hint” at the moment of a Covid variant that can fully evade the effectiveness of vaccines.
Sharon Peacock, head of the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium (COG-UK) and professor of public health and microbiology at the University of Cambridge, said it could be the case that coronavirus mutates to become less infectious, though she warned it could take years for it to become like the common cold.
Asked whether a variant will emerge somewhere across the globe that is resistant to current vaccines, Prof Peacock told Times Radio: "That's what we'd call it, a variant of major concern. We haven't seen anything like that to date, and the question you're asking is the million dollar question in many ways, everybody wants know what's the likelihood and when is it likely to occur, if at all.
"What we don't know is if it is likely to occur. We know that as mutations accumulate in the virus, it can actually make it more fit in terms of avoiding our immune system, but the more mutations it accumulates, it could actually lead to a virus that is less infectious, for example.
"So there's a trade-off for the virus in terms of how many mutations it can tolerate.
"Now, some people have predictedthataviruscouldemerge that is pretty resistant to vaccines, but we haven't seen any hint of that at the moment.
"And the idea that this could arise is based on models from previous viruses, not this current one, so at the moment, I remain optimistic that we're in a good place - that the viruses that are circulating are susceptible to vaccinations.
"And the key thing is to get on and vaccinate the world so that we can clamp down [on] disease. If we can reduce disease rates, then we reduce the risk of variants arising in the first place."
Prof Peacock said work was ongoing to look at the variant first identified in India, including whether it could spread in the UK compared to the Kent variant.
The Indian government has said the coronavirus variant first discovered there in March may be linked to its deadly second wave.