Health chiefs keeping watch on numbers to confirm virus peak
After Boris Johnson said he believed the UK had passed the peak of the coronavirus crisis last week, Sunderland City Council’s Public Health Director has given an update on how the city is dealing with the outbreak and how they will identify the peak in the area.
The team has previously said it believed Sunderland – which has been found to have the highest number of coronavirus cases per population – was approaching its peak in terms of numbers of deaths and cases.
Now they have said they are still looking at the statistics as they work to confirm the fact the area has passed the peak, while national efforts work to address how a second peak can be avoided.
The Public Health Director has said Sunderland has been among the hardesthit areas because of its aged population and the high number of smokers, drinkers and people with a poor lifestyle living in the city.
Director of Public Health Gillian Gibson said: “Latest data on the number of cases suggests that the rate of increase has slowed.
“We may be approaching the peak of the epidemic locally, but would need to see this sustained over a number of days to be certain.”
Ms Gibson went on to give the following updates;
“How we are doing at any point in time is judged by how flat or how steep the epidemic curve is.
“In order to be sure that we have reached the peak, we would need to see small or no increases in the cumulative total sustained – and the curve would then be flat.”
“The data we use to track the progress of the epidemic locally are the cumulative count of confirmed COVID-19 cases and the cumulative count of deaths involving COVID-19 from Sunday, March 7 – the day when we became aware of the first Sunderland case.
“Data on cases and deaths registered are received daily, but because we track these based on the date the test was taken or the date the person died, then any day’s data can have an impact on the figures for a number of previous days; this is usually about three to five days, but can be longer.
“This, in turn, means that we are always a bit uncertain about the last week and whether we know about all of the cases and deaths.
“This is broader than the deaths in hospital measure that NHS England publishes and includes deaths outside of hospital, so in a care home, nursing home, hospice, at home or elsewhere.”