Brighton & Hove City Council has announced that the city’s COVID-19 alert level status at will remain at “yellow” for the time being.
Last week, there were 47 confirmed cases of COVID in the city, which was down from 59 cases the previous week.
Lower than national average
This puts Brighton’s weekly rate of new cases at 16.2 per 100,000 residents, which is lower than the average rate in England of 34.9 per 100,000.
The Council said that although the statistics show a fall in the number of confirmed cases in the city, many people have found it difficult to get a test during the last few weeks following the closure of the Amex testing site, which may have skewed the figures slightly.
In response to growing demand for tests, a new walk-in testing site opened in East Brighton Park this week. Appointments must be in advance via the NHS website.
Hands, face, space
For the second week running, the most significant rise in new cases was among young people, particularly those aged 16-24.
In response to this news, Alistair Hill, Brighton’s Director of Public Health said:
“Although symptoms are usually mild in young people, we’re concerned about onward transmission through families out into the community. COVID-19 is still very dangerous, especially for older or vulnerable people.
“In a pandemic, we can’t all just take our own risk into account, we need to consider everyone around us. For each new confirmed case, their family, classmates, teachers, housemates, friends and colleagues must self-isolate for 14 days. As well as the anxiety caused by worrying if they have the virus, people who self-isolate cannot go out to work, study, exercise or shop for supplies for two weeks.
“Living through this pandemic has been hard for everyone and I know we’re all getting tired of the restrictions. I want to ask everyone to keep on playing their part in slowing the spread of the virus by following the Government’s ‘hands, face, space’ guidelines and observing the ‘rule of six’.”
An explanation of the alert levels with the most recent data is available on the Covid-19 key statistics page of the Council’s website.
