A top North East health official says North Tyneside's Covid cases are now "stabilising".
However the public health official has been warned that the mutant strain is so infectious, the majority of people living with a carrier will catch it.
The comments were made by Liz Morgan, Northumberland County Council's Director of Public Health, at Wednesday's full council meeting.
They came as data was published by the Government that backs up her suggestion that the spread is slowing in North Tyneside.
Cases there have increased by 44.6% in the past week. However, last week, cases more than doubled.
"North Tyneside has seen quite a significant increase in cases but that is now stabilising," she told councillors, before stating that officials don't believe the variant is running wild.
"The majority of the Indian variant cases that we are seeing in the North East are associated with this North Tyneside cluster.
"The cases are largely linked to other cases and known settings, and actually that's a really good news story because if we were seeing sporadic cases that we couldn't link to other cases or other settings, that would suggest we had wider-spread community transmission.
"In Northumberland we have had less than a handful of cases and they all have established links."
North Tyneside has had at least 40 cases of the variant, leading to extra testing and vaccines being made available by the Government.
However Downing Street sparked chaos by quietly publishing guidelines which suggested travel in and out of the area was banned. The Government later confirmed it wasn't.
Now data, published on the Government's interactive Covid map, shows there were 107 new cases in North Tyneside in the seven days ending May 21.
The area's infection rate (51.15 per 100,000) is currently only slightly higher than the region's second largest hotspot, Newcastle (48.9).
Elsewhere in the region, rates are "pretty much back to where we were back in August" added the Northumberland health chief.
However, addressing the new variant, she warned: "What we are finding is that in households that have a case of the Indian variant, the majority of the other individuals in that household will go on to develop a PCR positive infection."
