Coronavirus: ‘No room for complacency’ says Peterborough’s Director of Public Health

Peterborough remains on the government’s coronavirus watchlist, published on Friday, as an ‘amber’ area of concern but that list showed the city’s rate of new cases had declined on previous weeks.

The watchlist recorded Peterborough’s overall cases per 100,000 of population at 11.4, a downward trend on the previous week’s report which had the city at an overall rate of 28.4, and the week before that at 19.4.

Dr Liz Robin, Director of Public Health for Peterborough City Council, said: “The PHE (Public Health England) report shows Peterborough figures of just over 11 cases per 100,000 of the population – whereas our more recent data puts this at around 15 cases – but in both cases, this is well down on figures of almost 30 cases per 100,000 which we saw in early July.

“However, with the national average of cases sitting at 9 per 100,000 I reiterate again that while our measures are having some effect, we have no room for complacency and we must continue to work intensively across the city to prevent the spread of coronavirus in our communities.

“We continue to work closely with the community, businesses and others to reduce transmission rates. We continue to step up testing - with mobile testing sites available on different days in Gladstone Park Community Centre and Dogsthorpe Community Centre.

“On Wednesday (August 12) we launched our own local contact tracing scheme in partnership with Public Health England.

“This means we can identify pockets of infection even earlier, provide support and advice to help people isolate and break the chain of onward infection. So far we have successfully traced between one and three people each day who have not responded to the national call.

“I ask everyone to continue to adhere to all government guidelines particularly social distancing and hand washing.”

As well as the weekly watchlist report Public Health England also provides daily data on new case rates.

These daily figures fluctuate but also give an indication of the new case trend.

On Friday Peterborough’s new case rate per 100,000 of population was 19.3 (39 new cases), compared with 12.9 (26 new cases) the previous week.