Coronavirus cases continue to spiral out of control in Wirral, as the borough begins its first weekend in a third national lockdown.
The latest numbers go up to January 5, the day the lockdown started, and show Wirral’s rate climbing to 868 per 100,000 with 2,811 cases recorded in the last week.
That is a major rise on the 1,276 cases recorded in the week before, at a rate of 394 per 100,000.
The bleak picture is replicated across much of our region, with Knowsley’s rate at a startling high of 1,192 per 100,000 residents and Halton’s similarly high at 1,165.
Knowsley’s figure represents a more-than-tripling of cases in just one week, while Halton’s case numbers are well over double the levels they reached in the previous seven days.
Liverpool’s rate is also above Wirral’s at 895 per 100,000, as is Sefton’s at 905.
Both figures represent serious surges compared to last week’s numbers.
St Helens has the lowest infection rate in the Liverpool City Region at 692, but it still saw a major rise on last week's rate of 287.
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Looking at which areas of Wirral are most affected by the rise is more difficult, as the latest ward-by-ward figures only cover the seven days up to December 31.
But they do give us a picture of which areas saw the biggest spike over the Christmas period.
In the seven days up to December 31, Oxton had 127 infections, Bebington had 110 and Upton had 103.
Areas including Wallasey, Claughton and Moreton West and Saughall Massie also saw particularly high case numbers.
Across the borough, every single one of Wirral’s 22 council wards saw coronavirus infections rise.
Importantly, it is clear that this rise is not simply due to more testing.
The positivity rate, that is the percentage of tests which come back as positive, rocketed in the last fortnight of figures available.
In the week up to December 18, Wirral’s positivity rate was 4.9%, this increased to 8.4% the following week, but in these figures the number had shot up to 17.7%.
To tackle the rise in cases across the country, a national lockdown was brought in earlier this week.
The restrictions will be in place until at least mid-February, but the government’s hope is that a rapid rollout of vaccinations will allow rules to be relaxed in the following months.
Speaking after the rules were announced earlier this week, Cllr Janette Williamson, leader of Wirral Council, said: “[The authority] will be doing everything we can to support schools, pupils and parents, and will be strongly urging the government to provide additional help to those children who are struggling to move to online learning.
“Over the coming days and weeks there will be help for businesses which have been told to close and we will be supporting the most vulnerable in our communities to protect themselves during this period.”
