Almost 75,000 Covid cases in Staffs since start of crisis
THERE have been almost 75,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Staffordshire since the pandemic began – and 500 people have been fined for flouting rules brought in to control the spread of the virus.
Health bosses have also seen a rise in obesity rates since the start of the pandemic in early 2020 as residents faced more sedentary lives during the national lockdown periods. Facilities such as gyms and leisure centres were forced to close for several months, while outdoor exercise and sport sessions were restricted by limits on the number of people who could meet up.
Staffordshire Police have issued 500 fixed penalty notices to residents, while three businesses have been issued with directions by Staffordshire County Council to curtail or limit activities because of threat to public health, a meeting heard.
The impact of the pandemic on the county has been detailed by Dr Richard Harling, director of health and care at Staffordshire County Council, in his annual report which is due to be published this autumn. He presented the initial findings to members of the Staffordshire Health and Wellbeing Board.
He said: “So far in Staffordshire we have had just under 75,000 cases and that’s a cumulative case rate – the case rate since the start of the pandemic – of about 8,500 cases per 100,000 population.
“There is an issue with counting – the first wave was probably vastly under-remunerated and that is because at the time the country did not have well-developed diagnostic laboratory facilities. Probably something like one in 10 or 20 cases was actually confirmed.
“During the second wave last winter and the third wave at the moment laboratory capacity is much greater and we are counting a much higher proportion of cases. But there will still be a considerable number that are undiagnosed as people are relatively asymptomatic. The cases we know about are probably only the tip of the iceberg of all the cases that are out there. During the first wave in March/ April 2020 there was quite a considerable spike of deaths. There are three ways deaths get counted (including) deaths within 28 days of a Covid diagnosis (and) deaths where Covid has been recorded on the death certificate.
“Both of those have problems in that they rely on Covid being diagnosed; on the other hand they may overestimate the impact of the pandemic because some people will die with Covid rather than of Covid.
“The metric we tend to look at is the excess number of deaths compared to the average for the pre-pandemic period.”
Figures presented to the meeting revealed that of July 23 there had been 2,356 deaths within 28 days of a Covid-19 diagnosis. Covid-19 was recorded on the death certificate of 2,723 people and there were 1,908 excess deaths compared to the average for the previous five years.
The area is currently not seeing excess deaths however, Dr Harling said, which was largely due to the effects of the Covid vaccination programme.
He added “There is quite a lot of Covid around at the moment – the case rate is around 350 per 100,000 (people) in the last seven days and that has been creeping up slowly over the last few weeks.
“The number of hospitalisations is relatively low, certainly a lot lower than it was in January and February at the peak of the second wave. However that is also creeping up and the NHS and social care are facing quite considerable pressure at the moment from a combination of Covid-related and non-covidrelated illness.”
The Government said yesterday that a further 61 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19, bringing the UK total to 134,261. Separate figures published by the Office for National Statistics show there have now been 158,000 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.
As of 9am on Monday, there had been a further 30,825 lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases in the UK, the Government said.
The NHS and social care are facing pressure from Covid-related and noncovid-related illness.
Dr Richard Harling