Caution urged as Oxfordshire Covid case rates continue to drop

As of February 19, Oxfordshire’s rate of coronavirus infections for every 100,000 people was 76.9, the recorded number of cases standing at 532, a fall from the previous week.

The county’s director of public health, Ansaf Azhar said the fall was encouraging but urged people to stick to Covid restrictions as the Government plan to leave lockdown begins.

Speaking at Oxfordshire’s Health Improvement Board meeting yesterday, Mr Azhar said: “All of you will have heard the roadmap for easing. What we need to mindful of is even though our rates have come down, I would urge caution.”

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However, he added that it was important for people to still follow restrictions, to prevent the fall in case numbers from slowing down.

He added: “We have however seen a little bit of plateauing this week, however we don’t want them to plateau too early, they still need to significantly come down.”

While the most recent case numbers were a fall from the previous week’s number, 562 as of February 12, this was a less dramatic decrease than from the February 5 number, 931.

The public health expert said it was too early to tell yet whether people may be able to go on a summer holiday and stressed the same message as has been given in recent days by central government that the easing of restrictions will be governed by data and not by dates.

Mr Azhar added he wanted to ‘manage expectations’ about the end of lockdown, and said it was reasonable to expect a spike in case numbers in some areas as restrictions eased.

Oxfordshire County Council director of public health Ansaf Azhar. Picture: Oxfordshire County Council

As case rates of Covid decrease, Mr Azhar said local community testing capacity was growing.

Local public health workers have rolled out community testing in three centres across Oxfordshire: The Spicebowl Leisure Centre, Banbury; the King’s Centre, Oxford; and The Beacon, Wantage.

These have so far been used to carry out asymptomatic testing for public sector keyworkers to prevent Covid spreading in workplaces.

However, Mr Azhar said the capacity had now grown and these centres could start offering testing to other people who still had to leave home to go to work and whose employers could not offer testing.

He also said Government had extended its own testing plans, which meant this local offer would likely continue until June.

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The public health director also said the uptake of Covid vaccines was higher than the national average in the first four priority groups, especially among over 80s, where uptake was more than 90 per cent.

According to government data released on February 25, 438,952 people in total have received a Covid vaccine across the Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and West Berkshire NHS region.

This included 7,662 people aged 80 and above who had been given their second jab.

Mr Azhar was also asked how the vaccine uptake in BAME communities was faring, but could not provide exact numbers.

However, he added: “I have personally met with all the faith leaders to make this point – It is very strong when it comes from them – the vaccine is safe and our uptake among BAME groups is very good.”