Greater Manchester Mayor hails positive Covid-19 signs but regional case rate declining slowly

Andy Burnham set out the current position in the city-region at his weekly press conference on Wednesday afternoon.
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The latest figures showed positive news for Wigan, with week-on-week declines in Covid-19 case rates to the latest number of 174.6 cases per 100,000 residents for the seven-day period up to February 12.

Mr Burnham said the overall Greater Manchester case rate had now dipped below 200 per 100,000 people too.

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However, he also said the city-region's figure remains above the England average and there is some concerned that case rates are coming down more slowly than in other parts of the country.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy BurnhamGreater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham

Mr Burnham said he believed housing and work were the main reasons for this.

He said: "This has been a feature of the pandemic because of the endemic nature of the virus in some of our communities and the inequalities we experience.

"We have a higher percentage of people who have to go out to work because they can't do their work from home and many of them return home to housing where it is harder for people to self-isolate."

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Mr Burnham said workplace safety was a major concern, with complaints about conditions people face at their jobs continuing to come in.

He called on the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to consider reversing its decision to label Covid-19 as a "significant workplace risk" rather than a "serious" one.

He also said that better packages of financial support still need to be put in place for residents who have to self-isolate and warned he did not believe mass testing alone would work.

Mr Burnham said: "This remains the single biggest hole in the country's defences against Covid-19."

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The city-region's mayor said there had been an improvement in the position facing the NHS, with a bed occupancy rate of 83 per cent and a reduction in the percentage of Covid-19 patients from around 30 per cent to 17 per cent in the space of a few weeks.

However, he warned the situation remained tight and the NHS was not "in a position where it is out of the woods".

A slight increase in the percentage of care home residents who have tested positive for Covid-19 is also being monitored.

There was also a positive picture in the heatmaps with Wigan, like most boroughs, showing reductions in case rate across the age profiles.

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And Mr Burnham said that getting 90 per cent of Greater Manchester's over-70s vaccinated with a first dose was a "phenomenal achievement".

However, he warned that older people were choosing to have their jabs locally leaving mass centres like the one at the Etihad in Manchester under-used.

He proposed the Government open up the national booking system to over-50s who are more mobile and might be more likely to travel to get a jab and also suggested Greater Manchester authorities might call people up to use spare capacity.

The press conference also looked ahead to the Government's roadmap for reopening the country at the end of the lockdown.

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He urged ministers to implement a national phased approach and not consider returning to regional or local tiers, which he said had been "confusing and divisive" and had not worked.

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