Wigan Covid-19 figures fall but regional rise as Mayor urges caution over new strain

The weekly press conference on Tuesday afternoon showed there were 162.2 cases per 100,000 people in Wigan in the week ending December 17, a fall from the rate of 176.8 recorded the previous week.

However, the trend for the majority of the city-region was in the opposite direction, with seven of the 10 boroughs seeing a rise.

There were four boroughs with lower rates than Wigan's in the latest data but the borough's figure was slightly below that of 162.7 for Greater Manchester as a whole.

Mr Burnham said there was no evidence that the new strain of Covid-19 is in Greater Manchester but it should be assumed it is already in the city-region or is about to arrive.

That will potentially put "much greater" pressure on the NHS this winter, Mr Burnham said, making it vital residents follow public health guidelines.

However, the growth rate of Covid-19 in the city-region is just one per cent for the last two weeks, compared to more than 200 per cent in London and the East of England.

Greater Manchester has also had 163 cases in the seven days up to December 17, while the worst-hit local authorities have more than 1,000.

Despite that, Mr Burnham said it was possible the most concerning part of the pandemic may be coming up as many people usually hope take a break over Christmas and New Year.

Mr Burnham said: "We might just be facing the most dangerous moment of the whole pandemic. We're facing this at a time when many people are thinking about slowing down, switching off, taking a break. We're not in that position.

"We will be remaining vigilant over the Christmas period. There are real risks out there.

"We are seeing numbers elsewhere in the country that we have never seen in Greater Manchester, even at the peak of our second wave. This is a real change in what is happening on the ground.

"There is no evidence we are aware of that the new strain is in Greater Manchester. However, it's safe for people to assume it is already here or about to arrive.

"That gives us an opportunity to prepare ourselves and ensure we do not see spread becoming so rapid that it is out of control.

"Although the threat to the individual from the new strain remains the same the threat to the NHS is much greater.

"We need to do everything we possibly can to slow this down and observe all the advice over Christmas."

Mr Burnham said testing sites would be available throughout the Christmas period and urged people to make use of them.

He also said it was not inevitable that the area would end up in Tier 4, saying he would be reluctant to jump to stringent measures due to the amount of time Greater Manchester has already spent with restrictions in place.

He called for people to not travel over Christmas and self-isolate if they have arrived from Tier 4 as public health leaders have already urged.

He also said financial support for those needing to self-isolate remains "a gap in our armour that we have pointed out so many times this year but that has still not been filled".

Mr Burnham also said Greater Manchester remains in a very different position to the areas currently in Tier 4.

He hoped the Christmas period would work something like a lockdown if people followed public health advice and scaled back their plans to a modest, local celebration on Christmas Day.

People are being advised to keep the number of people they see to a minimum, maintain social distancing and continue to wash their hands.

He said the age profile of Covid-19 cases was a "pretty good picture" with more rises among the working-age population than the over-60s.

There is still spare hospital capacity in the city-region's intensive care and high dependency units but Mr Burnham said increases in admissions, even small ones, warranted caution at this time of year.

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