Health boss warns Sheffield's infection rate is 'too high with little room for manoeuvre'

It comes after the latest available Public Health England data revealed Sheffield’s infection rate jumped from 20.6 per 100,000 of the population in the week ending 21 June to 24.4 in the week ending 28 June.

That meant the city had the eighth highest infection rate in England at the end of this period. Public Health England data updated on Monday, 6 July showed Sheffield’s infection rate is still among the top 10 areas in the country.

Greg Fell, director of Public Health at Sheffield Council said: “It's gone down a bit since then [28 June]. It's stable, it's not going up massively, which would be a huge concern. Equally, it's not coming down. It's stubborn and that's the concern. If you look at the national picture, Yorkshire does stand out.

"The numbers are stable, that's the good news. But we would all rather they were going down - and quickly. They are nowhere near Leicester but there's not much room for manoeuvre. Don't think this is all over, this has got an awful long way to run. The more we all mix together the more opportunities there is for the virus to spread."

Mr Fell said Sheffield City Council has a plan for outbreaks as well as an outbreak board, chaired by leader Julie Dore and made up of community leaders from across the city to make sure different groups receive and understand the council's advice.

He said: "We have got the ability to manage incidents and there's one or two incidents at any one time in Sheffield, which is not unusual.

"The next couple of weeks to month is quite critical, the numbers could easily go the wrong way. We have got to keep up the vigilance and we have to for a while yet. The numbers aren't as high as they could be but they are too high and we will have to get that down."

Mr Fell said there are several considerations to take into account when imposing a lockdown. Among them, he has been told, is an infection rate threshold of no more than 50 per 100,000 members of the population across a one-week period, which he expects to come down as the government continues its efforts to keep the spread of Covid-19 under control.

He said: "The other thing is how many cases have we got going on at any one time and how in control we are. If we have a large number of incidents that will shove everyone on high alert.

"Sheffield is nowhere near that at the moment [lockdown] and long may that remain but we have all got to be responsible for that. The virus is still here - 95 per cent of us weren't affected by this in wave one. None of us want to go back into lockdown and the way to avoid it is to all play our part."

He added: “I don't think it's so much local but I do hear it nationally about having the economy open again. Of course we need to reopen the economy because the lockdown has done harm but if we don't get this right we will find ourselves in lockdown again.”

Mr Fell admitted he is worried some people with symptoms would find it hard to self-isolate for two weeks and cited loss of earnings as one possible reason.

He said: "I know full well there's a lot of people who will have mild symptoms that won't get a test because if it's positive someone will say you need to isolate for 14 days.

"The second thing that worries me is if you're in contact with a confirmed case that does mean you need to be isolated. It doesn't mean go to the shops or the pub or wherever else is reopen.

He said people not adhering to these instructions is "probably" why the virus continues to spread in Sheffield and elsewhere.