‘Worrying’ numbers failing to turn up for second Covid jabs as Sheffield infection rate doubles

Latest figures, for the seven days to June 25, show the number of positives tests per 100,000 people in Sheffield rose from 69.4 the previous week to 137.3. That represented a rise from 406 cases to 803.

Director of Public Health for Sheffield, Greg Fell, said: “I am hearing that there is a worrying number of people not taking up the offer of the second vaccination when contacted. The first vaccination gives you some protection but the full protection that you get from both vaccinations. It’s really really important that you get fully vaccinated, ie take your second dose when offered.

“This seems to be particularly the case against the Delta variant and it’s really important that you get fully vaccinated as soon as possible.”

He said: “We want to keep Sheffield open so that for all the stuff that’s coming up over the summer the best way to do that is to keep following the safety rules and to get double vaccinated

Mr Fell said that the R rate, which describes how many people each patient passed the virus on to, was now above one, and had been for a couple of weeks now.

He added: “Most of the growth is in under 30s , definitely in the under 35s who are the least well vaccinated of our population to date.

“(There has been a) slight uptick in hospitalisation, only slight, and interestingly, looking at the hospitalisation data over time, we’re getting to a much much younger cohort of people in hospital – much lower number of people in hospital but the cohort is younger, they are unvaccinated.

"This virus can still harm people, and there's an appreciable number of under 40s who have been harmed by the virus over the course of the last couple of months.

Being double vaccinated reduces the risk of hospitalisation for an 80 year old to about the same as a 50 year old but it doesn’t eliminate risk

Walk-in vaccination centres for adults are running at The Octagon at the University and Darnall Primary Care Centre.