Covid-19 infections are falling across the Liverpool City Region as a drop in cases nationally provides some hope that the country may have passed the peak of the current wave.
The number of new cases in the country has dropped for five days in a row, giving some hope that things are moving in the right direction - although caution is advised as we are yet to know the full impact of the July 19 unlocking.
National cases were rising sharply and reached a high point of around 55,000 per day on July 17, but have fallen pretty consistently since then. The hope is that this will continue, although the next few days and weeks will be crucial.
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Locally, we have seen a fall in cases as well.
Looking at the latest figures, which covers testing up until July 22, all boroughs of the city region have seen a week-on-week decrease, except Halton, where cases were basically flat.
These are the figures up to 22/7/21. Firstly, the infection rate per 100,000 residents of each borough, with the absolute figures in brackets.
Halton - 404.9 (524)
Knowsley - 446.1 (673)
Liverpool - 428.7 (2,135)
St Helens - 484.5 (875)
Sefton - 398.0 (1,100)
Wirral - 401.5 (1,301)
City Region - 423.8 (6,608)
These are still relatively high, but crucially they have started to come down in the last week from highs of just over 500 cases per 100,000 people.
The percentage change compared with the previous week is given below:
Halton - 0.2% rise
Knowsley - 16.7% fall
Liverpool - 13.7% fall
St Helens - 9.2% fall
Sefton - 19.2% fall
Wirral - 22.7% fall
City Region - 15.4% fall
Given there is no national lockdown at the moment, these numbers are encouraging and hopefully suggest that the vaccine is having an important effect.
However, it is still a little too early for us to see the impact of the full reopening of July 19, but there is certainly some optimism that we might not see cases reach the level some had feared. Again, the next few days and weeks will be crucial for the city region.
While there is positive news when it comes to case rates, there is less good news when we look at deaths.
Sadly, we have seen a fairly sharp rise in deaths after the recent spike in cases in the Liverpool City Region.
So far there have been 51 covid deaths in our region in July, compared to just 10 across the whole month of June. Around 20 of these happened in the last week.
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