A verbal update will be given at the meeting on the current position regarding the Covid-19 pandemic. The Committee is recommended to receive the update and comment as required.
Minutes:
The Chair invited Rob Howard, consultant in Public Health (Medicine) to provide a verbal update on the Covid-19 data for the City.
It was reported that:
· Officers were cautiously optimistic, with the rate of infection quite a long way below the national rate of 499 per 100k. The City was at 422 per 100k.
· Infections had gone up in past weeks but not as fast as many other areas. Figures were now coming down alongside national numbers.
· One area of concern was the rate for the ‘at risk’ group over 60s which was higher than national average.
· The rate in 17-21 years was high, at just over half the national rate.
· School age children were lower than the national rate.
· There was a small increase in the number of people in hospital.
· The city was doing well in terms of statistics for vaccinations. 82% in the Over 50s had had both doses and were fully protected.
· Both doses were needed to protect against the delta variant.
· Only 39% of the overall population (including children) was fully vaccinated. As the country opened up there was still a risk of the virus spreading through the population.
· Numbers were down in Leicester due to a combination of really intense work over the Easter period when the Delta virus was taking over, the theory that there was a high level of natural immunity in Leicester (vaccinated or had had virus). The pattern of infections had changed recently with highest rate of infections now in areas that had lower immunity from earlier infections, such as New Parks.
· In terms of ethnicity the White British population had one of the highest numbers of infection rates, whereas in the past it had been areas of high Asian / Indian / Pakistani communities.
· There was some indication that the recent increase in rates was related to the Euros (being seen nationally) and school holidays. What will soon be seen will be the impact of the opening up of the night time economy, in particular night clubs.
· Overall the city was in a good place, but people needed to be cautious and keep vigilant as to what was going on around them.
· Vaccination needed to continue to be pushed, particularly amongst young people, with testing and contact tracing continuing.
Councillor Kitterick noted the figures for the city centre and West End of the city in terms of vaccination rates was worrying and questioned whether people were not going for vaccinations because of lack of confidence or whether there had been a data cleanse of who was on GP lists at surgeries because they had gone away. The officer responded it was down to a number of factors and that they were actively looking at the situation with CCG colleagues in looking at vaccination figures, such as looking at the number of the younger Chinese population who were largely students and there was a feeling that they had now left the city but were still registered with GP practices in the city and hence the number of vaccinations appeared low. Also those areas when looking at the vaccination numbers overall, there were high levels of younger people who had only recently become eligible and were more vaccine hesitant overall because the impact of the virus on them was not as significant.
It was further noted that the CCG had data that could be broken down by ward, ethnicity and age to provide a very detailed picture on vaccination rates for dose one and dose two on a Middle Super Output level, and information was analysed on a regular basis to get messages out to specific groups where lower levels of uptake were seen.
It was noted that Asian and Black ethnicities were more likely to die with Covid-19 than other communities. Overall White British people had the highest level of vaccination rates, with the lowest uptake by Eastern Europeans. Data was used to target low uptake of the vaccine in those communities by the CCG who had good engagement with the communities. Work being done had had an impact and officers were seeing rates of vaccination uptake going up. It was important to note that rates in all ethnicities was reasonably good, but just needed to make sure young age groups of all ethnicities were targeted.
The City Mayor stated it was not known, for example with the Polish community, whether a significant number may have returned to Poland. But what was known there were differences between different ethnicities, different age groups in the take up of the vaccination but none were disastrously bad, just that some were better than others. Officers agreed and elaborated the point that when looking at national vaccination levels, there were high levels of hesitancy in Eastern European countries and Poland was one where there were low levels nationally, with social media passing on high levels of Covid-conspiracy theories.
What was pointed out was when looking at the vaccination rates for Covid-19 when compared to flu vaccination rates, it was astonishing how many people had been vaccinated.
The Chair thanked the officer for the positive report, but noted the virus was still around and required people to be cautious and vigilant.
AGREED:
1. That the report be received and its contents noted.