Dear Resident

 

Below are the most up to date figures we have for Hertfordshire.

 

As of yesterday, Watford hospital had 180 patients with Covid 19. This is more than during the first lockdown and the local NHS also has a significant number of front-line staff away from work due to Covid 19.  As you can see from the figures, we all need to do our best to help the NHS and all our front-line workers. 

 

I will try to keep my website and Facebook as up to date as possible during the Christmas break.

 

Please keep safe, protect yourselves and others 

 

Mike

 

DAILY PUBLIC HEALTH BRIEFING

Please find below today’s briefing.

New Variant Strain

Our briefing on the new Variant Strain is now published and can be read and shared publicly here

• It is now clear that this new variant is more easily spread, accounting for around 60% of the cases of Covid in Hertfordshire in the past four weeks and accounts for the significant rise in the last month across much of the East of England, London and South East. Hertfordshire included. 
• The variant is spreading to other areas of the Country and numbers in South Wales are now concerning.
• London and the counties which surround it are seeing rapid and significant rise in numbers due to this
• The behaviours which we know stop covid will work for this strain provided we adhere to them rigorously and persistently.
• We are reviewing every aspect of our work from Hospital Infection Control to testing and swabbing practice to determine what we need to change/adapt in light of the emerging new knowledge about the new strain.

Dashboard

Today’s dashboard is below.

Key points are a large and continuing surge in infections similar to other areas and consistent with the enhanced ability of the new variant to spread.

• Large incidence rate increase of 83.1 across Herts across the last week
• Large Increase in case numbers.
• Large increase in hospital admissions and in NHS staff off sick or self-isolating
• Cases are expected to increase over the course of the week.

 

 

Data Dashboard

As always our dashboard of data is available at https://hcc-phei.shinyapps.io/covid19_public_dashboard/ though please be aware that reporting of deaths lags by some time due to ONS reporting and collation.