Peterborough’s director of public health warns city residents ‘coronavirus hasn’t gone away’

Figures released today showed that Peterborough sits at 13th in the national table of new case rates with 21.4 an increase on previous figures which had dipped below 20.Today, Dr Liz Robin, director of public health for Peterborough City Council and Cambridgeshire County Council, said: “The data published yesterday tells us overall trend of cases of coronavirus in Peterborough is not increasing and both hospital cases and deaths linked to coronavirus have been falling for the last eight weeks.

“However, we know that our rates of positive Pillar 2 test results have consistently been higher than other areas in the region, and we do share common factors with other areas where this is being observed in the make up of our population.

“As a result of receiving even more detailed data about this in the last fortnight we have increased proactive and targeted public health messaging in Peterborough – and the county as a whole with the launch of our ‘keep caring’ campaign on Tuesday, and have been using postcode level case data to target our prevention and outbreak management efforts through our community rapid response team, especially given the reduction of lockdown measures last weekend.

“We have focused our efforts on the city centre and Millfield and New England areas to support communities with advice around social distancing and measures they can take to keep themselves and their friends and family safe. This includes working with takeaway outlets to ask them to encourage customers to social distance, deploying a mobile video van and asking community leaders to help share messages.

“Most importantly, people need understand that coronavirus hasn’t gone away, and there are very risks to the whole community if we don’t all continue to social distance and follow the other public health advice.”

“As part of our Outbreak Control Plan we continue to have daily surveillance meetings that monitor cases, outbreaks and health trends in Peterborough and we do investigate any concerns regarding confirmed cases with Public Health England to confirm that any outbreaks are identified and well managed.