‘Current measures aren’t justified and I have the figures to prove it’

CITY mayor Sir Peter Soulsby says the city council’s latest analysis of where most people are testing positive for coronavirus does not justify keeping the full lockdown in place.

Council public health officials have been studying the results of testing carried out in the two weeks up to July 4.

They say the figures indicate that only one in 10 of the city’s “lower super output areas” – divisions of 1,000 to 1,500 people defined by the Office for National Statistics – have had an issue with increased transmission of the virus during that period.

Sir Peter, who was planning to release his full analysis today, says it will show not only that there is not a case to continue the Leicester lockdown in its current form, but that tighter restrictions were not justified in the first place.

He said: “What we can show is that of the city’s lower super output areas, only 10 per cent of them show excess positivity rates.

“If we had had this level of data six weeks ago we could have taken very specific steps in the right places to drive the virus down with targeted action rather than spreading our efforts over 100 per cent of the city.”

The locations of those 10 areas have not yet been released.

However, Sir Peter said the council was preparing lower super output area maps which would show specific areas where there had been an issue with transmission of Covid-19.

He said: “What we will show is that you cannot really justify the continued lockdown of the city in its entirety and beyond that, areas further out like Birstall.”

Sir Peter has been involved in a war of words with the Government over Leicester City Council’s lack of access to key data he says was needed to tackle the virus “street by street and neighbourhood by

neighbourhood”. However, he said the situation had improved.

The council is now getting regular information, including the postcodes of people who test positive, as well as the number of negative tests in the city.

But the mayor, right, said that this information was needed daily.

The Government’s deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van Tam, has said

Leicester

“is still quite an outlier in terms of the rates of coronavirus infection compared with any other place in the country unfortunately, and any other place in the East Midlands”. Testing for the virus has been massively stepped up in the city over the last fortnight and Dr Van Tam quoted a Public Health England report from Friday which said that the seven-day rate of infection in Leicester was 126 per 100,000 people.

He compared that to Leicestershire, where the rate was 17.17 cases per 100,000 people, and Derby and Nottingham which had respective rates of 9.3 and 5.4 per 100,000.

Dr Van Tam said coming out of lockdown could not be rushed, and urged that the quickest way of getting the restrictions lifted was for people to stick to the public health guidance which included maintaining two-metre social distancing, regular hand-washing and wearing face coverings.

Dr Van Tam said the local lockdown was justified.