The steady fall in Covid-19 cases around the country continues - with both the UK as a whole and areas in the North East seeing rates of the virus on April 20 around 30% lower than a week earlier.
Now, just two places in the North East had more than 500 cases per 100,000 people in the seven days to April 20. At the end of March, before free mass testing for Covid-19 ended, just ten areas saw rates that low - and some saw case rates almost three times higher.
Though cases have continued to fall during April - even compared to similar levels of testing earlier in the month - there remain hundreds of Covid patients in North East hospitals and it is expected that more people have Covid-19 than just those showing up in official figures.
Last week, the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) survey suggested that in the week to April 16, more than three million people had Covid-19. That works out as one in every 17 people. This is down on previous weeks in April, when the figure was as high as one in 13.
However, there remain hundreds of people testing positive in the North East each week and though the numbers of positive patients in hospital have begun to fall, there is still serious pressure on the NHS. On April 26 there were 1,950 Covid-19 positive patients in hospital - this is down from more than 2,600 on April 12.
According to the Government's Covid-19 dashboard, case rates continue to fall. Across the UK as a whole, the rate of people having tested positive per 100,000 has fallen to 226.2 Of course, figures from before April 1 and not comparable with those after - given the end of free mass Covid-19 testing. However, the data does give an indication of the direction the virus has gone in over the past three weeks.
The North East area to see the most new cases in the week to April 20 was Amble, Shilbottle and Swarland - which saw 48 new cases for a rate of 377.6 per 100,000. That's a 17.1% bump in cases, showing that though the trend is broadly downwards, Covid-19 retains the ability to spike across the region.
In our area, County Durham 's case rate was down to 281.2 after 1,499 confirmed cases over the week to April 20. That's a reduction of 28.8% and each day since April 6 has seen a fall of near to 30%. But in Gateshead the Covid-19 rate is now 265.9 after 537 cases in the seven days to April 20.
In Newcastle the case rate fell to 248.7 positive tests per 100,000 people - there were 737 reported cases over the week. That's the least seen since the last days of February. North Tyneside 's rate was 306.4 after 640 new cases - that's 23.2% fall week-on-week.
Northumberland, as of April 20, has a rate of 308.9 after 997 reported cases. That equates to a 24% drop and is the lowest rate the county has seen since March 2. In South Tyneside the case rate has stabilised at around 259.4 per 100,000 people - but it is still down 21.8% on last week. The borough saw 392 positive cases reported. In Sunderland, after 697 cases over a week, there was a rate of 250.9 cases per 100,000 people. That's down 36.8%.
The ten areas with the highest Covid-19 rates in the North East as of April 14 were:
Barnard Castle - 546.6 cases per 100,000, 40 new cases
Morpeth South & West - 536.4 cases per 100,000, 36 new cases
Springwell & Unsworth - 484.3 cases per 100,000, 28 new cases
Newton Aycliffe North - 474.9 cases per 100,000, 41 new cases
Hebburn West - 470 cases per 100,000, 30 new cases
Windy Nook & Whitehills - 460.5 cases per 100,000, 31 new cases
Newton Hall & Brasside - 454.3 cases per 100,000, 37 new cases
Herrington & Doxford - 450.7 cases per 100,000, 30 new cases
Blaydon North & Winlaton Mill - 450.5 cases per 100,000, 30 new cases
Forest Hall & West Moor - 442.2 cases per 100,000, 28 new cases
Have you had Covid-19 in the last week? Let us know in the comments below
