Covid rates soar just as city hosts 2022 Games
COVID rates are soaring across Birmingham just as the city gets set to host the Commonwealth Games.
The council is now taking additional measures to ensure everyone who enters the country from the Commonwealth is checked.
But the authority has also announced it will disband the Local Covid Engagement Board despite the chances of a so-called ‘super-spreader event’ at the games.
This news comes ahead of the latest report from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) which shows that in the 28 days up to June 23, infections rose by 35%, including 17 deaths.
This means a total of 350,762 people have now been officially diagnosed with Covid since the start of the pandemic in Birmingham, though the figure is likely to be far higher.
Latest figures also show that there was a rise of over 45 per cent in the 7 days up to June 23.
This was a rate of 123.9 per 100,000 population, which was lower than the national rate for England of 178.9 per 100,000.
Birmingham is following the national trend as cases rise all across the UK, but councillors say they are stepping up checks ahead of the games.
Dr Mary Orhewere said: “The main issue for us has been understanding what our surveillance strategy would be because that’s how we get notified that there might be a situation that needs dealing with so we’ve got all our regular measures in place for providing information.
“We have taken some additional measures to get information from the various Commonwealth countries that we’ll be visiting or rather whose athletes will be visiting. But we are very mindful that not all of our athletes will be coming from those countries directly. They may be coming from other events that are happening internationally. There’s a whole programme of events that athletes attend and so we’re extending it beyond just the Commonwealth nations that are taking part.
“In recent weeks the situation with monkeypox and more recently concerns about polio has also been a really timely reminder for us that we need to be ready for all of the things we need to do to protect people and not just Covid. So lots of work has been done and I think we are in as reasonably a good place as we can expect to be at this stage.”
Despite the possibility of a superspreader event at the games, Justin Varney, director of Public Health announced the Local Covid Engagement Board will now meet for the last time as councils across the country update their strategy on tackling Covid.
Mr Varney said: “There is limited value in continuing the board.
“What we’ve now switched to nationally, is a model which follows the way that we do flu surveillance. So we have a series of sentinel practices that are representative in their distribution across the country.
“We continue to do random sampling of people who present with respiratory symptoms to check for Covid and that’s very similar to the methodology we’ve had with flu, which works well and is internationally recognised as good practice.
“So this paper sets out a recommendation to the board that we stand down the local outbreak engagement board and we can of course stand it up should we see a significant surge pattern or issue of concern.”