Wirral saw a fall in its coronavirus hospital numbers for the first time since December this week.
The latest figures show that on January 26 there were 265 people in Wirral’s hospitals with Covid-19, a fall from 272 a week earlier.
However, this week also saw the peak in the borough’s hospital figures across the whole pandemic, with 279 virus patients being treated on January 22.
Nevertheless, for the week as a whole virus-related admissions did fall, ending a sustained surge in Covid-19 patient numbers.
Going back from the figure of 272 registered on January 19, there were 252 virus patients on January 12, 137 on January 5, 78 on December 29 and 62 on December 22.
That represents a clear rise each week from December 22, after a period in which the borough’s Covid-19 hospital numbers were largely stable in the 60s following the success of the second national lockdown in reducing infections.
Hospital bosses will be hoping that the slight fall in virus patients can become sustained and gather pace in the next few weeks.
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This hope will be bolstered by decreasing case numbers in Wirral.
In the week up to January 25, there were 1,346 cases in the borough at a rate of 415 per 100,000, down from 2,164 cases at a rate of 668 per 100,000 recorded a week earlier.
A ward-by-ward breakdown in cases shows where the virus is most prevalent in the borough.
The figures cover the week up to January 22 and show that Seacombe had 109 cases of the virus at a rate of 706 per 100,000.
Other wards with high infection numbers include Bidston and St James (103), Upton (97), Liscard (95) and Birkenhead and Tranmere (90).
Despite these high numbers, all 22 of Wirral’s council wards saw a fall in cases, including Seacombe which saw a fall from 121 to 109.
But the positivity rate, that is the percentage of tests which come back as positive, should make people cautious about reading too much into the falling numbers.
In the same seven-day period, Wirral’s positivity rate was 16.4%.
That is a fall on last week’s rate of 18.5%, but a minor one and it is far above the rate of 2.3% seen at the beginning of December.
