Agenda item

Meradin Peachey Pearce provided an update on the Covid-19 situation in West Berkshire. She stated that all data presented was correct as of Sunday December 20 2020. She also noted that the slides being presented were now in line with the rest of Berkshire and would be published on the Berkshire Public Health website.

Changes to restrictions:

·       Tighter restrictions were put in place on 20 December for areas with a rising number of infections

·       The whole of Berkshire was put into tier 4: stay at home

·       The local alert levels would be reviewed every 2 weeks

·       Alert levels were informed by a number of indicators, such as incidence rates and NHS use

Situational awareness:

• She noted that the positivity rates per 100,000 had risen across all Berkshire authorities compared to the previous week and now stood at 244.2 per 100,000 population, which is higher than the week before and higher than the week before that.
• The number of cases per 100,000 in the 60+ age group stood at 169.1

·       The positivity rate was 9.3%

• The number of new cases in the last 7 days was 387
• West Berkshire had now had 2,399 cases of Covid-19
• She noted that parts of Kent now had over 1000 cases per 100,000

Epidemiology of cases:

• There has been a total of 20,376 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Berkshire. 77% of these cases have occurred since the beginning of October. Berkshire’s weekly rate has continued to increase over this time, although it has remained lower than the national rate.

Deaths

• There have been 147 COVID-19 related deaths in West Berkshire during the pandemic. 
• 3 deaths were recorded for the last week (28 Nov- 4 Dec).
• Since March 2020, West Berkshire’s all-cause mortality rate has been 20% higher than the previous 5 year average, which equates to 180 additional deaths.

Hospital activity

• Hospital activity information was not available for Berkshire hospitals or residents in a format that can be shared publicly. The information on this page therefore shows the latest data for the NHS South East Region.
• On 18 December, 2,372 patients were in hospital with COVID-19 in the South East. 168 of these were on mechanical ventilation. The hospital admission rate was continuing to increase.

Outbreaks:

• An outbreak is defined by PHE as two or more cases with highly probable or confirmed epidemiological links. For care home settings one case counts as an outbreak.
• Number of new outbreaks in West Berkshire by setting (30 Nov – 14 Dec):

Measures to prevent Covid-19

• The most effective method of stopping transmission of Covid-19 is to wash your hands regularly for 20 seconds, to use a face mask in shops and enclosed public spaces and to keep 2 metres apart from others.

Councillor Doherty stated that the cases per 100,000 in age groups seemed to be stable across the pandemic, but that the number of cases in those aged 18 or below had decreased recently. She asked if there was any particular reason for this.

Meradin Peachey noted that most cases were in the 40-59 age group and the 18 and under had gone down a little.

Councillor Doherty asked if there were any reasons as to why particular wards in West Berkshire were seeing more cases than others.

April Peberdy noted that this was being looked into and she would raise it at the surveillance cell meeting.

Councillor Masters asked about the testing capacity in West Berkshire. He noted that he had received feedback of problems with getting a test at Newbury Showground. He also asked about the accuracy of tests. He also asked if the sudden increase was solely down to the new variant or whether there was a change in people’s behaviour.

Meradin Peachey noted that the data had shown there is enough capacity, but that problems mentioned had been reported to the DHSC. She also noted that PCR tests were 95% accurate. She further stated that the new strain had played a large part in the spread across the south-east, but that it was still unknown whether the virus was in West Berkshire. She noted that the new variant was still transmitted in the same way so it was vital to continue with measures to prevent infection.

Councillor Vickers asked about private tests and whether they were legitimate. She also asked how the vaccine would be rolled out.

Meradin Peachey noted that any private tests done were validated by PHE to check that they had a licence. Furthermore, she noted that 30% of people with the virus were asymptomatic. Lastly, she stated that the best place to carry out vaccinations was in primary care.

Councillor Wollaston noted that given the complexities of storing the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine may mean some primary care settings were waiting for the Oxford vaccine.