Covid-19 cases at their highest in Cheshire East since pandemic began

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Covid-19 cases are at their highest level in Cheshire East since the global pandemic was declared in March 2020.

Latest figures released on the official UK government website show the rate of positive cases in Cheshire East Is 540 per 100,000 population. This is significantly higher than the rates per 100,000 population in the North West and in England of 408 and 357 respectively.

For the 7–day period ending on 7 October 2021, the MSOA's (Middle Layer Super Output Areas) in Cheshire East with the highest positive case rates per 100,000 population are:

  • Sandbach Ettiley Heath & Wheelock - 1,175
  • Alsager West - 1,161
  • Alsager East – 1,013
  • Sandbach North – 1,008
  • Congleton West Heath - 868

Councillor Sam Corcoran, leader of Cheshire East Council, said: "This latest surge means we have a record high number of positive Covid-19 cases right across the borough.

"Even though Covid-19 hospitalisations remain low, if we don't prevent the cases from rising with winter approaching, there could be major disruption to children's education and in adult social care settings."

These latest figures from Public Health England for our local areas show the number of cases during the 7 day period and the infection rate per 100,000 people.

  • Alderley Edge and Chelford – 43 511.7 (53.6%)
  • Handforth and Dean Row – 40 368 (8.1%)
  • Mobberley, Plumley and High Legh – 87 725.8 (50%)
  • Wilmslow Town – 45 631.4 (2.3%)
  • Lacey Green and Wilmslow Park - 34 508.6 (41.7%)
  • Fulshaw Park and Lindow - 36 495.9 (-48.6%)
  • Prestbury and Adlington - 25 489.4 (19%)

% = change from previous 7 day period.

During this seven day period, Cheshire East had 2087 cases, which represents an 5.3% increase on the previous 7 days. 

Councillor Craig Browne, deputy leader of Cheshire East Council, said: "We know only too well just how much our residents and businesses have done and already given up.

"I appreciate asking you to do more now is a difficult message, but that is exactly what we must all do. Each one of us needs to keep going with all those things we have been doing to stay safe – get vaccinated, keep testing at least twice a week and if you have symptoms, self-isolate straight away and get a PCR test."

Dr Matt Tyrer, director of public health at Cheshire East Council, said: "Despite the best efforts of everyone, Covid-19 cases are now rising across the borough, our neighbouring local authority areas and the north west.

"The advice now is that we ALL need to take precautions to help stop the spread. We MUST go back to following the basics of what we all know – hands, space, face and fresh air.

"Getting vaccinated whether that is your first, second, booster or flu jab is safe and the most effective way at keeping you from getting seriously ill, preventing hospitalisation and even death.

"Maintaining a regular lateral flow testing regime at least twice a week is really important and can help to identify early transmission. We know more than a third of people who test positive do not have any symptoms, and therefore can pass on this virus unknowingly.

"We will continue doing everything we can, working closely with schools and our partner agencies to reduce case numbers. But ultimately it is down to the behaviour of our residents to do the right thing, for themselves, for their family and friends and for our society which is so desperate to get back to doing what they previously enjoyed."

To book or manage your coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccination, go to the NHS website.

For full information on where to get tested or pick up home testing kits visit the council's testing web page or to order lateral flow test kits to be delivered to your home visit the GOV.UK website.

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Comments

Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.

Richard Bullock
Wednesday 13th October 2021 at 7:53 am
From the Government Dashboard: 1 in every 43 school children aged 10-14 in Cheshire East tested positive for Covid in the last week - that's almost one case in every class in every high school in the borough in the last week. What are Cheshire East doing to control spread in schools - since cases exploded in this age group after the Summer holidays and are now growing fast in age groups that could be their parents?

For other school-aged groups, it's 1 in every 79 of those aged 15-19, and 1 in every 92 primary school aged children aged 5-9.
Terry Roeves
Wednesday 13th October 2021 at 8:44 pm
With Halloween, Guy Fawkes night, Christmas parties, New Year’s Eve parties this quarter, then what are the chances that the CEC R number will fall below 1?

Advice offered is of little use to the age groups quoted by Richard Bullock (thank you), IF they pay it little or no attention to it.

So how confident can we be that CEC can act decisively to prevent more cases, hospital beds filling and more deaths? Does not sound as if they can.

What options do they have or must CEC wait for national government?
Tony Haluradivth
Thursday 14th October 2021 at 12:27 am
The big difference from last year is that we had/have a successful vaccination programne. In the news for the last week we have the story of millions of faulty lateral flow tests giving false positives. We carry out more tests per head than ANY other European country. If we dropped the testing regime down to the numbers carried out in Spain or France I imagine we would be on a par.

My grandson tells me that children at his school are regularly dipping swabs in orange juice to gain a positive result. He says numbers spike before school tests or before assignments are due to be handed in and marked.

I am nearly 90 and have had all my jabs and am not scared so why are you?
Our Council would love another Lockdown (preferably a regional one) as they get a cash handout from the Government. They should be boosting morale and not fearmongering. The hospitals are NOT overrun. Sam Corcoran is an avowed Marxist and many of his fellow travellers support the highly dubious Zero Covid Alliance...
Terry Roeves
Thursday 14th October 2021 at 6:24 am
Time will tell Tony. Stay safe!
Simon Worthington
Thursday 14th October 2021 at 8:04 am
Thanks Tony. I will reiterate again to those quoted above. A positive lateral flow test (not authorised since 28/8/2021) is NOT confimation of the illness Covid19 nor is it a "case".
The only figures that matter are the numbers admitted to hospital who are already infected.
Dear Matt is still convinced that asymptomatic people can spread a virus they don't necesarily carry, as opposed to pre symptomatic who possibly can.
For those interested explore why PHE down graded SARS-CoV2 from a HICD (high consequence infectious disease) on 19/3/2020. It was necessary to do this in order to claim no treatments are available ( legal protocols exist for a HCID) and to give EMERGENCY USE ONLY authorisation to vaccines which still applies. NO vaccine is licenced or should be marketed, or especially pushed at children on the basis that it may improve their mental health or stop them "missing out".
Vic Barlow
Thursday 14th October 2021 at 12:09 pm
It has taken a 90-year-old man to apply some common sense thank you
Tony Haluradivth.
Of course Covid isn't going to disappear any more than influenza (from which there are 25,000 death every autumn).
We have the vaccines we pleaded for which are performing way beyond the the range we expected.
We need to get back to work and show the world what we can do.
How else are we going to have all the goods and services we demand.
As Mr Haluradivth says: "I am nearly 90 and have had all my jabs and am not scared so why are you?"
Tony Haluradivth
Thursday 14th October 2021 at 2:35 pm
Ah thank you kindly Mr Barlow. How I miss getting my copy of Wilmslow Express on a Friday and reading your amazing musings on local life. I do hope you are keeping well:)
Peter Davenport
Thursday 14th October 2021 at 8:06 pm
I notice that the heavy concentration of the virus is in the lower half of the County.
Whilst figures are interesting, an important addition to the number of cases would be, how many of the had ha no jabs at all.
Surely the more who get the virus, and have not been vacinated, they are at fault believing all the scare stories, and also not thinking about the community in general.
Peter Davenport
Stuart Redgard
Thursday 14th October 2021 at 8:15 pm
I know it's not Cheshire East but let's not forget the following:

.....A 15-year-old girl who tested positive for Covid-19 has died on the day she was due to have her vaccine, her family said.

Jorja Halliday, from Portsmouth, died at the Queen Alexandra hospital on Tuesday, having tested positive for the virus four days earlier.

Jorja was struggling to eat on Sunday and by Monday she could not eat at all because of her throat hurting.

A doctor prescribed antibiotics, but Jorja’s condition worsened and she was seen by a doctor who said her heart rate was double what it should be and she was taken to hospital.

Preliminary results from the hospital’s medical examiner indicated Jorja had Covid myocarditis, heart inflammation caused by the virus.

Also

... ..More than 1,000 fully vaccinated people in England have died from the Delta variant between 1 February and 29 August, according to the latest data from Public Health England.

In this time period, 37 people under the age of 50 who had been double jabbed and 1,054 over-50s have died after testing positive for the Delta variant – now the dominant strain of the virus in the UK.

This compares to a total of 536 COVID deaths of unvaccinated people from all age grounds during that time.

Sources: Several mainstream media outlets.
Alan Brough
Thursday 14th October 2021 at 9:16 pm
Stuart,

I was struggling to believe those (unbelievable) stats but the last line, crediting multiple mainstream media sources is the giveaway - it’s dangerous bunkum.
Stuart Redgard
Thursday 14th October 2021 at 10:31 pm
Alan Bough

There is a lot of "dangerous bunkum". Especially on this thread.
Richard Bullock
Friday 15th October 2021 at 6:23 am
@Tony Haluradivth: "In the news for the last week we have the story of millions of faulty lateral flow tests giving false positives."

It looks like there has been a retraction of this: there were numerous reports of people, mainly in the south-west, with all the symptoms of Covid, with multiple positive lateral flow tests, but then getting a negative PCR test. There is apparently to be a statement released today by the UK Health Security Agency, saying there was a problem at one of the PCR testing labs which has now been resolved - effectively - the Lateral Flow tests were true positives - and the PCR seems to have been a false negative, for whatever reason that might be revealed in the statement.

This is unlikely to affect many Cheshire cases - most of the reports are from the south-west region - around Bristol, Gloucestershire, Swindon, Wiltshire, but also affecting West Berkshire - but the statement might reveal that some other counties might be affected to a lesser extent too perhaps.
Richard Bullock
Friday 15th October 2021 at 7:03 am
@Stuart Redgard:
" ..More than 1,000 fully vaccinated people in England have died from the Delta variant between 1 February and 29 August, according to the latest data from Public Health England.
In this time period, 37 people under the age of 50 who had been double jabbed and 1,054 over-50s have died after testing positive for the Delta variant – now the dominant strain of the virus in the UK.
This compares to a total of 536 COVID deaths of unvaccinated people from all age grounds during that time."

There were around 22,500 Covid deaths in England during this period. The PHE data table is only looking at cases that were genomically sequenced - so it's actually looking at a small sample of overall deaths.

But, you would expect more vaccinated people to die of Covid than non-vaccinated at this time - because in the older age groups - those most vulnerable - nearly 95% of people are double-vaccinated. There are now 19 times as many double-vaccinated people over 75 as there are unvaccinated.

So if the 5% unvaccinated people are making up 1/3rd of the deaths - that's hugely disproportionate clearly showing that vaccines reduce risk and save lives, but they're not perfect at preventing every death.
Stuart Redgard
Friday 15th October 2021 at 12:17 pm
Richard Bullock

"So if the 5% unvaccinated people are making up 1/3rd of the deaths - that's hugely disproportionate clearly showing that vaccines reduce risk and save lives, but they're not perfect at preventing every death."

Thank you.

That's exactlly the point I was trying to make.

No vaccine is perfect. What they are meant to do is reduce risk and save lives.

We are not out of this pandemic yet. We are still somehere near the midle of it.
Gemma Evans
Sunday 17th October 2021 at 10:32 am
News reports are missing something key, which has been displayed clearly on the interactive map on the ONS website for the past few weeks. For almost 18 months infection rates were highest in metropolitan areas, which resulted in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and London. Now all those cities appear blue on the map (meaning fairly high infection rates), while more rural, shire counties like Cheshire, Shropshire, Norfolk and Somerset appear purple (meaning very high infection rates.)

Terry Roeves raises a valid point about upcoming events. At one point town councils questioned whether Artisan Markets in Cheshire should go ahead if it meant visitors came from Greater Manchester would turn up. Now councillors in Greater Manchester may be asking the same question with regards to people turning up from Cheshire East.

There were some tabloid claims that children were using orange juice to get false positive results but that was debunked by scientists as fake news, due to the fact orange juice doesn't trigger a positive result on a lateral flow test. If Tony Haluradivth's grandson is telling the truth about children adding orange juice to try and their sample to get a positive and actually getting a positive, then it likely means those children were infectious at the time. If anything using orange juice would be more likely to result in a false negative by diluting the concentration of the liquid containing the virus.
Fiona Doorbar
Sunday 17th October 2021 at 5:48 pm
A report on Scientist.com backs up Tony’s post and I too have been told that this is going on in schools!……Here’s what it states….
‘there are some ways that these tests can go wrong, and one really obvious one is if you put something into the test which isn’t supposed to go in the test, particularly something like a strong acid or an acidic solution. What you can do is you can mangle up, if you like, or mess up the antibodies in the test. And when you do that, you can get unexpected results.
What I’ve been able to see—and there’s even some papers that have looked at this experimentally—is that under some circumstances, you can get the appearance of a positive line.

Covid is not going to be eradicated so we just need to learn to live with it.
Tony Haluradivth
Wednesday 20th October 2021 at 2:40 am
Thanks Fiona and you are right as the PM said (as did Ian Vallance) in the Summer that we will have to learn to live with Covid i callous as that sounds. We cannot live our lives going in and out of lockdown. For those who think that route is ok I imagine their lives to be sheltered and cushioned from the dramatic and negative impacts they have on many people's lives .
And the orange juice? Gemma it can be done with Coke also...I tried it myself and got the tell tale double line you just don't put the swab in the buffer but drip the coke or OJ onto the test cartridge. Certain "enterprising" kids show the harrassed parent(s) the positive test and voilà time away from the classroom.