CORONAVIRUS:  No local lock down for the Dales

It looks like North Yorkshire is not at risk of a localised lock down, like neighbouring West Yorkshire.

There's no risk of a local lock down in North Yorkshire for the time being according to Dr Lincoln Sargeant, the county’s director of public health, who says the county is not currently one of the areas on a watch list for infection rates.  The infection rate in North Yorkshire is currently below the average for England.
   
Speaking during a meeting of North Yorkshire’s Outbreak Management Advisory Board today, Dr Sargeant said despite his optimism people should remain vigilant:  “Over the last two or three weeks we have seen an average of about two or three cases per day across the county and that has increased in the last week or so to about five to six cases per day.

“The cases break down broadly into three categories:

The majority of spread is in households, so typically one individual becoming infected and passing it on to two or three other individuals in their household. So that’s the sporadic pattern that we see across the county.

We are also seeing an increase in the number of cases in care homes and this is largely because of more proactive testing. We test people moving from hospital into care homes and the other way. We also test care home staff and we are trying to do that on a weekly basis. So that has also thrown up individual cases that we are following through.

The third reason for cases is a number of outbreaks, which in North Yorkshire we have kept relatively small, and these are in workplace settings such as factories and hospitality settings.

The point to make in North Yorkshire is that our rates remain very low and certainly not in the ballpark of other areas that are on national watch lists or local lock down arrangements. So it gives us some confidence that we are not in that vicinity currently.”