During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Barrow-in-Furness was labelled a “pariah town” when it emerged the Cumbrian local authority had by far the highest number of positive cases per head of population in England.
Now, analysis of positive tests in Barrow suggests a rigorous testing regime at the local hospital trust can explain much of the greater diagnosis rate.
Between 1 March and 31 May, 43.7% of all positive results in Barrow were from university hospitals of Morecambe Bay trust employees; 55.1% of women diagnosed with Covid-19 in Barrow worked for the trust, according to analysis by Public Health England (PHE).
After adjusting for age and level of deprivation, the diagnosis rate of Covid-19 in Barrow during this period was 847.5 per 100,000. For north-west England as a whole it was 504.9 per 100,000.
Councillor Ann Thomson, the leader of Barrow borough council, said: “The nationwide data released initially showed a far greater number of Covid-19 cases in Barrow than other parts of the country.
“Unfortunately, this data provided no additional information or context which was a huge concern to us all. We asked for an in-depth investigation to look into the factors behind the figures so we could be sure the right measures were in place to protect the most vulnerable in our communities as lockdown eased.
“This investigation has now been completed and shows Barrow’s higher incidence of coronavirus was actually down to the rigorous testing regime implemented early on by our hospital trust. The trust led the way nationally in terms of testing and we thank them absolutely for their proactive approach to controlling the spread of the pandemic in our area.”
Simon Fell, the Conservative MP for Barrow, welcomed the investigation. “Remember the headlines about Barrow being a ‘pariah town’ and the Covid hotspot of the UK? At the time, I asked the health secretary to look into whether there was any truth to this, or if it was due to the exceptional work of our local hospital trust in testing so very many people,” he wrote on Facebook.
“The health secretary, and the director of public health for Cumbria believed that our ‘high’ rates were due to that high rate of testing. Essentially, we asked the question very many times, and so we got a lot of answers back. This didn’t mean that we had a high coronavirus rate, but rather that we understood better what was happening in our local area.”
In May, Thomson and her colleagues wrote an open letter to the health secretary, Matt Hancock, and the head of PHE, Duncan Selbie, to call for an investigation into the figures.
The resulting report, conducted by PHE’s north-west field service, found diagnosis rates of Covid-19 in people of working-age in Barrow was more than double that in the same age group across the north-west.
It was also 3.4 times higher in working-age females in the borough than their male counterparts. Such a gender discrepancy was not observed to this extent elsewhere in the north-west but could probably be explained by the fact 81% of employees of the healthcare trust were women, PHE concluded.
However, among children and younger adults, the rate of infection was in line with the north-west average. Among older people, it was significantly lower.
According to the government’s daily covid dashboard, Barrow still has the third highest number of cases per 100,000 population of anywhere in England, behind Leicester (4,695 cases, which equates to 1,321.7 per 100,000 people) and Ashford in Kent (1,327 cases, or 1,026.4 per 100,000 people).
