Our weekly round-up of coronavirus news - 22 April
DATA regarding the case rates, hospital occupancy and vaccinations has been released by GMCA today.
Sir Richard Leese addressed the press via a pre-recorded video which is now available via the GMCA Twitter feed.
Sir Richard's takeaway point this week was: "What we've seen is the vast majority of hospitality premises and non-essential retail premises that have reopened has been really well managed. The people using them overwhelmingly are following the guidelines and keeping themselves and other people safe. A big thank you to everybody for doing that, and we need to keep doing that so that when we get to the next staging post in the roadmap we are able to move to the next bit of unlocking. It really does depend on us and how we behave. Over the last couple of weeks, well done to everybody involved."
Case rates
Sir Richard said: "The good new is that for the third consecutive week we’ve seen a significant fall in the overall prevalence of Covid-19”
Greater Manchester overall is down to 37.4 cases per 100,000 population. All areas have seen a decrease apart from Bolton, which has had a very slight rise from 47.6 to 49.4.
Sir Richard also showed the rate for over-60s, with the reminder that this is the category most likely to end up in intensive care if they contract COVID-19. He said, "The fact that these numbers have gone down very significantly continues to be good news."
The number of cases in car homes is also at an all-time low.
Hospitals
"The total number of beds occupied by COVID is around 3% of stock in hospitals," says Sir Richard. "Some days in ICU we've had zero admission so we are most definitely getting in the right direction. The converse of this is that our hospital occupancy [with non-COVID cases] is relatively high. A large backlog has built up over the last 12 months and it is going to take time to clear that."
"Hospitals have learnt an awful lot over the last 12 months about how to do individual case assessments and how to analyse priorities. The recovery will be driven by making sure that wherever you live in Greater Manchester you will be seen in order of need," added Sir Richard.
Vaccinations
The number of first vaccinations is now well over 1.3 million, with second vaccinations approaching half a million in Greater Manchester.
Sir Richard said: "It's important that people get their second vaccination where able... The roadmap isn't automatic, it depends on our own actions, including vaccinations."
