The new area in Sheffield where Covid-19 infection rates are ‘becoming a concern’

The latest Covid-19 infection rate in Sheffield, for the week ending on October 31, is 411.6 new cases per 100,000 people – down from 465.1 in the previous seven days.

Sheffield’s director of public health, Greg Fell said rates have reached a new plateau but ‘it’s a plateau that’s much higher than is comfortable for any of us’.

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In his latest update, he described how the main source of transmission is household to household but there are exceptions.

“The east of Sheffield is becoming more of a concern. This is a pattern we saw last time round. (There are) many people in more manual jobs, many people who have frontline-facing jobs, that work in retail or work in supermarkets or work in the healthcare industry can’t work from home like I can work from home. That increases the chances of infection,” he said.

“So those types of jobs are more concentrated for people who live in the east of the city. As a result, infection is beginning to concentrate in the east of the city and that becomes a concern but principally household level transmission.”

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Mr Fell said Sheffield’s infection rate was flattening off, mostly due to a ‘significant reduction’ among 18 to 24-year-olds, but rates continued to rise in all other age groups, including over-65s, who are most at risk.

He warned that hospitals are ‘really quite busy’, with the flu season coming, and routine surgery may have to be scaled back.

“We’ve not yet seen a substantial increase in deaths but that will sadly come,” he added.

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"There’s no doubt about the fact that the deaths lag behind hospitalisations which lag behind infections. So that may come, probably not to quite the same level as we saw in the last peak but it will come.”

Mr Fell said the national lockdown would ‘buy us significant time’ but would not get levels down to where they were during the summer.

“In that time we need to ensure that our testing, contact tracing and isolation are working better than they are at the moment. They are working, no doubt about that, but there are some significant problems that need to be addressed,” he added.