Shropshire’s Covid rate lowest since October

The Covid infection rate in Shropshire has dropped to its lowest level since before the second wave began in October.

The rate has fallen below 100 per 100,000 people for the first time this year, and death figures have more than halved in under two months.

Shropshire Council’s director of public health said the decline was starting to ease pressure on the county’s hospitals, but she warned there is still plenty of work to do.

Giving an update to the authority’s health and wellbeing board, Rachel Robinson said it was important that people continue taking up the vaccine and making use of the available testing options to help the downward trend continue.

Ms Robinson said: “Our rates are now falling. Our current rate is 93.5 (per 100,000) in all ages, which is a 30 per cent reduction on the previous week, and we are down to a rate of 61 per 100,000 in our over-60s.

“Our latest data would suggest the rate has fallen even further, to around 81 per 100,000.

“That’s good news. That brings us back to the level we were at in October, which was before we went into that second wave.”

However, Ms Robinson said the rate remained higher than the national average, mirroring other areas of the West Midlands.

It is also considerably higher than the rate seen in the county last summer, which Ms Robinson said was around seven in 100,000.

She added: “We are definitely going in the right direction.

“We are starting to see that reduction and that significant reduction in our over-60s, but we still have a way to go.

“We are seeing an impact on our deaths which is positive, our deaths are falling.

“When we (the health and wellbeing board) met in January our death rates were increasing and we peaked at around 35 deaths in seven days which is a significant number.

“We are now falling and our deaths are around 16 in the last seven days, and the situation in hospitals is improving as well.”

Ms Robinson said the plan going forward as the country moves through Boris Johnson’s ‘roadmap’ out of lockdown is to continue promoting the vaccination and testing programmes.

Shropshire currently has one of the highest testing rates in the West Midlands, with sites across the county for both symptomatic tests and asymptomatic tests, which front line workers and those who cannot work from home are being urged to take twice a week.

Ms Robinson said: “The more we test the more assured we can be that we have got lower rates in our population.”