Coronavirus infection rates in Bolton are not dropping as quickly as experts had hoped.
While the number of new cases of Covid-19 has been gradually falling during the lockdown, officials at Bolton council's public health department were expecting more progress.
The town currently has an overall infection rate of 272.6 new cases per 100,000 people over the last week, higher than the national average and among the highest in Greater Manchester.
There are 'positive signs', according to Bolton's assistant director of public health Lynn Donker, but the rate has only dropped by 13 percent in the last week compared to an average reduction of 27 percent across England.
This lack of progress is particularly clear when you look at working age people - those between their 20s and 60s - where the number of cases is dropping even more slowly.
"We've got some positive signs in that our case rates do now show signs of coming down," Ms Donker explained.
"It's not as quick as we'd like to see. While we're really pleased to see them starting to come down we're really mindful that they're still quite high.
"They started from a high point but obviously we need them to come down a lot more. The other thing that's really striking us at the moment is that they're not coming down at the same rate in all age bands.
"What we're seeing is the rates are a bit slower to come down in some age bands than they are in others. Particularly our working age band, 20s to 60s, they're quite high. They are coming down and heading in the right direction but again not quite as quickly as the overall rate.
"We've got some positive signs, things are going in the right direction, but ideally we'd like to see things coming down more quickly."
There has also been some concern about a new more transmissible variant of Covid-19 which is thought to have swept across the country.
In fact, the public health department in Bolton believe that this new strain - first uncovered in Kent just before Christmas - is probably now accounting for around three quarters of new cases in the town.
Researchers were concerned that the vaccines currently being used across the country might not provide protection from this new form of the virus, which has a slightly different structure to the original strain.
However, a new study suggests that the vaccine will be effective at stopping both versions of the coronavirus.
This is good news in Greater Manchester, where more than 86 percent of over 80s have already received their first jab.
And generally, while experts are not completely happy with the speed rates are falling in Bolton, they are not far out of line with the rest of the region.
"I don't think we're standing out as an outlier in any way at the moment," Ms Donker added.
"We're pretty much in line with what's happening across the North West as a whole.
"We're seeing those signs that the rates are coming down and we're seeing that in the rest of the North West and some other areas like the Midlands and across Yorkshire they are seeing a similar pattern in that the overall rates are coming down but a bit more slowly in working age groups.
"It's not a feature that is unique to Bolton, it's something that's being experienced by other areas that share different demographics to ourselves."
