Newcastle is to "step down" its Covid alert level to "green" - and director of public health Prof Eugene Milne has said he does not expect recent increases in cases to continue, "unless there is another variant".
Prof Milne was speaking at a meeting of Newcastle City Council' s City Futures Board, and he told the meeting it was "the appropriate time" to both step back the alert level and reassess the city's "Covid Control Plan".
He said that recent rises in Covid-19 cases had begun to "level off". The city's rate of Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people over the last seven days is 484. That is higher than the figure for across the LA7 group of local authorities it is 430, while in the North East as a whole it is 404.
