The number of new Covid-19 hospital admissions in Greater Manchester is rising for the first time since mid-November, as the mayor warns the arrival of a potent new strain to the region is now ‘inevitable’.
However Andy Burnham says he does not yet think the time is right for the conurbation to be placed into Tier 4 restrictions.
He told this afternoon’s weekly press conference that infection rates here - which are up 1pc in the past week - are still ‘flatlining’ and argued the region is currently in a ‘very, very different’ place to the rest of the country.
But tougher measures could not be ruled out if the figures deteriorate, he added.
His comments came as data presented at the same press conference showed new hospital admissions for Covid are now rising for the first time since the week of November 16.
Since then they had been steadily declining, but the latest numbers show them rising from 51 new cases to 65 in the past seven days.
The increase is combined with the second consecutive weekly rise in in-patient diagnoses - people already in hospital who are then found to have Covid.
This week that figure was 468, the highest since November 23 and 30pc up in a fortnight.
There has also been a rise in Covid patients in ICU, from 89 to 94.
However the mayor said the increases were ‘modest’ and stressed that intensive care capacity is at 68pc, compared to more than 90pc in some parts of the country.
Asked whether Greater Manchester should be seeking Tier 4 restrictions before the trends get any worse, Mr Burnham said: “I think we have to act proportionately.
"I always will point out that Greater Manchester will have been under restrictions for five months by the time we get to New Year’s Eve and I think people need to bear that in mind in terms of what that has meant.
“Tier 4 restrictions would create significant issues for people over the Christmas period in terms of the plans they would have.
“The figure in Greater Manchester for infections at the moment is 1pc growth and that I don’t think would justify Tier 4 at the moment, on the evidence we have.”
However the mayor also conceded that it was an ‘inevitability’ that the new, more infectious strain of Covid-19 was either already here or would be arriving soon.
Yesterday the region’s ten directors of public health had warned that anyone arriving here from Tier 4 areas should self-isolate for ten days, calling the new variant ‘extremely worrying’, although there is not any scientific confirmation that it is yet here.
Public health departments do believe it to be behind a spike in Cumbria, however, while Mr Burnham said there were also concerns it had found its way into Lancashire and the parts of Cheshire bordering Wales.
Even so, he said, at the moment infection rates here are not spiking and he said the North West as a whole ‘is in a different position to the rest of the country’.
Given that travel to Greater Manchester had probably already taken place over the weekend and that people were now probably going to remain ‘where they are staying’, he added, ‘we can assume that we won’t see the same level of spread that we would expect to see in a normal time’.
But he also said of the new strain that ‘it’s safe to say it’s already here’ and added that the infection rates - as has been the case in London, Kent and South Wales - could change fast in a matter of days.
Although our numbers are currently ‘significantly lower than the rest of the country’, said the mayor, he added: “I certainly wouldn’t rule out the need for a national lockdown.”
