An update from Dr Rupert Suckling

Monday, 26 April 2021 14:32

This week I want to start with some good news, that is that we now have under 10 people in the acute hospital being directly treated for Covid.

This is our lowest figure since early September.

However at the same time as the low hospital numbers we still have one of the highest Covid rates in the country.

Our rates for the week 10^th to 16^th April are 78.2 per 100,000.

I have been working closely with local test and trace and data teams this week to try and understand the reasons why our rates don’t seem to dropping as quickly as our neighbours and why we still remain in the top 3 nationally. What we have seen over the past couple of weeks is a large number of cases that can be traced back to 3 household parties. One of them was the child’s birthday party I told you about a couple of weeks ago, which has since resulted in one person being hospitalised, the other two were a 16^th birthday party and what appears to have been a Grand National party.

I know it is exciting to be able to finally see each other again and I know the nice weather has helped with garden parties but I would just like to remind people that we should only be meeting in groups of 6 (or two households) at the moment as we ease our way along the roadmap. I would ask you to refrain the urge to host larger parties until we reach the next step (hopefully on the 17^th May) and help us get our rates down as far we can before we get to this point.

In contrast to this, we have seen a very successful first week (and weekend) of retail and pub gardens reopening. Our Doncaster businesses have done us really proud with the COVID safe measures they have put in place to make sure that people can enjoy shopping or meeting for an outdoor lunch again as safely as possible. I would also like to thank you all on their behalf as we have had great feedback on how everyone who has enjoyed the re-openings have behaved, respecting the hands, face and space guidance. At this point we have not seen any cases linking back to the reopening’s, which shows that following the guidance does work.