New Covid variant blamed for huge surge in Derbyshire cases

Case rates in the city and the connecting borough are soaring and are the highest in the county – and by some distance.

Dean Wallace, Derbyshire County Council’s director of public health, says it is a fair assumption that the new strain of Covid-19, which is up to 70 per cent more transmissible and contagious, is behind the rapid and alarming increases.

As of the week to January 3, Derby had a case rate per 100,000 people of 588, followed by Amber Valley on 526.

Both rates have doubled in around two weeks.

In the week to January 5, Derby saw 1,426 new cases of the virus with 613 in Amber Valley.

The county has been setting record highs for daily and weekly case numbers with more than 4,000 cases per week and in excess of 800 per day.

Mr Wallace also tsaid that the county, city and country are in the ‘most perilous position’ it has ever seen at any point during the pandemic.

He added that the the local NHS was ‘struggling to cope’ and that Derbyshire finds itself in a ‘worrying’ and ‘very difficult’ situation.

Mr Wallace said the current position was based on a number of factors, including the new strain, winter pressures and fatigue among residents regarding Covid regulation compliance.

And he warned that the Covid-19 vaccines alone are not the key to ending the pandemic and releasing the nation from a third lockdown, emphasising that stringent compliance with basic measures is essential, including good hand hygiene, wearing a face covering and maintaining social distancing.

He also suggested that social distancing, face coverings and focused community testing would be around next winter and potentially for years to come, particularly in areas where there is low uptake of the Covid vaccines.

And he added there are already areas, mostly those which are less affluent and with more people sharing accommodation such as HMOs (houses in multiple occupancy), where the virus is endemic and will never be totally gone.

He said: “The vaccine is the biggest ticket but the vaccine alone will not get us out of it.

"We also are not going to get to May and all of this is going to switch off.

“Next winter is going to be difficult, potentially, and it is going to have to be vaccination with some form of targeted local testing and some form of local health response for a number of years, particularly in communities where vaccine uptake might be lower and in communities where Covid-19 is already endemic.

“That tends to be the more deprived communities, the communities where they have to go out and work regardless of what is happening so people doing low-paid jobs and more likely to be in multi-occupancy housing.

“There is giving hope and there is giving false hope. We need people to buy into the vaccine and the guidance and next winter will still be a pinch point.

“I don’t think we will be in the same place we are now but I do think there will be guidance around face covering and social distancing.”

On the second strain of the Covid-19 virus, which first surfaced in London, Mr Wallace said: “From what I have been able to ascertain, that new strain is everywhere.

"What I don’t have yet is the data for what is happening locally from testing.

"What I would say is that we are being told to look for rapid increases in rates in a short amount of time.

“If you look at Amber Valley and its increase in rate, which at one point almost went to a vertical line, that to me makes me think that it is the new strain that is causing that, I don’t believe that is just down to people’s behaviour.

“What we are seeing is rapid rate increases in Derbyshire as a whole, behind the national level but not too far behind.

“Now, every seven days we are seeing increases in rates of 60 or 70 per cent increase on the previous seven days.

"That is quite a significant rate of increase.

“Amber Valley is quite connected to Derby city and that in and out travel could be linked, too.

“The data and epidemiology leads me to believe that there is something different happening this time in the speed of increase than what we saw previously.

“Potentially, the assumption at present is that the new strain is more prevalent in Derby than other East Midlands cities.”

Mr Wallace said we should not expect to see a notable reduction in Covid cases for another few weeks into lockdown and that hospital admissions will take even longer to reduce.

He continued: “We’re in a really difficult place at the minute.

“We’ve got an NHS that is struggling to cope and is under significant pressure and we are having to cancel operations and redefine what hospitals are able to do.

“That is a massive concern and that will have a toll on the health of the population and people getting that treatment.

“People are needing to call 111 instead of turning up at A&E.

“This is the most perilous position we have been in – forget April and forget November, this is it.

“We’re now in the riskiest position we have been in since this whole thing started.

"We have got to get through to March and protect ourselves, friends and loved ones.

“Protect the people you care about from getting into NHS settings by following ‘hands, face, space’ stringently.

“It is highly likely we have got the new variant here and it will continue to spread and we need to follow those measures even more stringently than before.

“People will say I am scaremongering but that is the truth of it.”