Millions live in areas almost free of Covid
Many places in England have near zero cases but the figures do not appear in Downing Street slides
More than seven million people across the country are living in areas where Covid-19 has effectively vanished. Latest figures show that 971 of 6,791 local areas across England recorded fewer than three Covid cases in the seven days up to Feb 23. Around
7.3 million people live in these neighbourhoods, 13 per cent of the total population. Areas reporting between zero and two cases are marked by Public Health England as “suppressed”.
MORE THAN seven million people are living in areas where Covid-19 has effectively vanished, analysis by The Daily Telegraph reveals today.
Hundreds of neighbourhoods across the country recorded close to zero cases last week despite remaining under national lockdown restrictions.
Cases have fallen so low in many areas that Public Health England (PHE) has deliberately “suppressed” data to protect the tiny number of infected people from being shamed on social media.
Last night, MPS suggested that slides shown at Downing Street press conferences were failing to communicate that the virus had almost disappeared across large swathes of the country.
Latest figures show that 971 of 6,791 local areas across England recorded fewer than three Covid cases in the seven days up to Feb 23. Around 7.3million people live in these neighbourhoods, 13 per cent of the total population.
Areas reporting between zero and two cases are marked by PHE as “suppressed”, meaning the true number of positive tests is withheld. Official guidance states that this is to prevent the small number of infected people from being publicly shamed due to their “rarity or uniqueness”.
Across the country around a third of rural Middle-layer Super Output Areas (MSOAS) – Nhs-defined districts used for collecting statistics – are now marked as “suppressed” including large parts of Cornwall, Devon and Wiltshire.
However, the virus has also effectively died out in pockets of England’s largest cities, with around a tenth of urban areas reporting between zero and two cases last week.
In London, which was hit hard by the Covid second wave, “suppressed” neighbourhoods include Notting Hill West, Pimlico in Westminster, Balham in Wandsworth and Hampstead Town in Camden.
Meanwhile, Greater Manchester neighbourhoods including Trafford and Oldham, as well as Liverpool City Region areas including Wirral and St Helens, also saw cases drop to near zero.
The data also reveals that even in neighbourhoods hit hardest by the Kent variant at the end of last year, cases have fallen to negligible levels. Of the 100 most infected areas of England during the peak of the second wave, 11 were marked as “suppressed” last week.
These include the rural area surrounding Waltham Abbey in Essex, one of the first counties hit by the more contagious strain of Covid-19 at the end of last year. The area now has at most 34 infections per 100,000.
National heat maps shown at Downing Street press conferences are usually divided into 315 Lower Tier Local Authorities, rather than at a granular neighbourhood level. Much of the map presented by Professor Jonathan Vantam, the deputy chief medical officer, on Feb 26 was coloured green or blue, suggesting case rates of between 50 and 100 per 100,000 people.
However, more localised data divided into 6,791 MSOAS reveals that cases have fallen to near zero in many areas.
Bath and North Somerset, for example, was coloured light green in the Downing Street slide, suggesting a case rate across the area of around 50 per 100,000.
Yet the map failed to show that 16 of the 27 MSOAS in Bath and North Somerset recorded between zero and two cases last week. In the city of Bath itself, only two out of 14 neighbourhoods recorded three or more positive tests.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-brown, Tory MP for the Cotswolds, suggested the slides should be “clearer” that some areas had seen Covid cases fall to near zero.
“I think there should be as much transparency as possible,” he said.
Yet the data also reveals worrying spikes in infections in the Midlands and east and west coasts of England, following government warnings that one in five local authority areas in the UK had experienced a rise in coronavirus cases in the last week.
Local flare-ups include the rural area of Underhill and the Grove in Dorset, where, between the weeks ending Feb 16 and Feb 23, case rates more than doubled, from 364 per 100,000 to 877.
Likewise in the urban neighbourhood of Wetherby East & Thorp Arch in Leeds where case rates more than quadrupled, from 299 per 100,000 to 1,252 over the same period.