'Sheffield is not a hot spot for coronavirus'

Director of Public Health Greg Fell has addressed rumours that Sheffield has had more cases than other places.

He said: "Sheffield is seen as a hotspot because the teaching hospitals started testing their staff in very large numbers very early whereas everywhere else was just testing patients.

"All the tests in Sheffield hospitals were all counted as positive tests.

"When we look at the number of patients in Sheffield hospitals and compare that to other areas, we are about average."

Mr Fell also said the NHS was concerned people with other health issues were avoiding coming forward for treatment.

"The impact of non Covid-19 illness has been clocked, so much so the NHS is very concerned that people are not using health care in the normal way.

"The NHS has started a campaign to say they are still open for business and have plenty of capacity."

He added lessons have already been learned about the impact of coronavirus and what to do moving forward.

"We don't fully understand the impact of Covid-19 but it's fair to say it has been inequitable both in terms of the infection itself and also the social economic impact.

"We adopted the pandemic flu plan but it became very clear very early on that this was coronavirus and behaving very differently to flu so we have changed our response and been adapting continually.

"PPE has been difficult and ditto testing but we have had a pretty good response in care homes."