Trafford’s Director for Public Health has warned the borough is ‘absolutely not out of the woods’ yet regarding coronavirus.
While the borough ’s rates are declining, they remain higher than health bosses want to see.
Eleanor Roaf said: “Our rates are still higher than we’d like and what we’re seeing with each lockdown is that the rates do come down and that very definitely the lockdowns work, but this time they are coming down more slowly.
“That’s the same across the whole of Greater Manchester and from being below the England rate before Christmas, our rates are now above the England average.
“There does seem to be a strong link between deprivation levels and speed at which the rates come down.
“So for us in Trafford that gives us particular concerns about the north Trafford area and the rates there remaining higher.”
Trafford’s top five areas with the highest rates at the moment are in Urmston, St Mary’s, Stretford, Longford and Clifford – which all have rates over 300 per 100,000.
Ms Roaf added: “We continue to have rates over 100 per 100,000 in every ward, so we are absolutely not out of the woods and we really do need to make sure that we’re all doing everything we can to reduce our covid risk at the moment – including working from home wherever possible.”
New E484K variants of coronavirus found in Hulme in Manchester do not undermine the effectiveness of the vaccine, Ms Roaf added, and are ‘unlikely’ to spread into Trafford from what they know about how it spreads.
She said: “This should not undermine anyone’s confidence in the vaccination programme. People shouldn’t be worried that they are going to be more ill because of that variant. And you shouldn’t worry about going through that area – if you work or do your shopping there, it’s just the usual lockdown precautions, there are no additional lockdown measures in that area.
“They’re just trying to find those cases [with a surge testing programme]. The reason it’s relevant to us is because one of the edges of the area of concern borders Trafford, along the Withington Road, Ayres Road area of Old Trafford.”
Old Trafford has seen stubbornly high covid rates throughout the pandemic, but Ms Roaf wanted to reassure people working or studying in the Hulme, Moss Side area of Manchester, who live in Old Trafford.
She added: “We know that this particular area, because of the impact of deprivation, has had higher impact from covid.
“We really want to make sure that we’re putting in place everything that we can to support our community.”
No new variants have been found in Old Trafford yet.
Ms Roaf added that Trafford has also done ‘better’ than other Greater Manchester boroughs in terms of getting support out to residents, financial and otherwise and supporting them to access funding.
Grants remain available from the council for individuals, families and businesses struggling.
