Region’s Covid rates dropping week on week

THE Covid-19 case rate in one area of the North East is now below 50 – and just 14% of places in our region saw a rise in cases over the last week in April.

Based on data from the week ending April 29, the case rate in Durham City was down to just 47.6 per 100,000 people. That’s reflective of just seven new cases. Based on ‘medium-super-output areas’ – roughly postcode areas – it was one of 57 places to see the number of new confirmed cases in single figures.

Across the North East as a whole, there were 4,432 cases recorded in the week to April 29. A week earlier the figure was 6,751. That meant that the rate of cases in our region – 165.3 – had fallen by more than a third (34.4%).

However, with free mass testing no longer available, these figures cannot illustrate the full current spread of the virus, though indicators such as hospital admissions and the weekly national coronavirus survey do also suggest that Covid-19 is becoming less prevalent here.

The most new cases were seen in Cramlington Town and Beaconhill (38) but even that is down on the numbers seen earlier in the month.

Some places had been seeing a figure in excess of 50 cases a week; this is no longer the case.