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.
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By comparison, the nationwide figure is 614, Prof Milne said. Speaking about the figures, he added: "What's notable is that in the last week or so is that these numbers have been stable on a day-by-day basis. The rolling average may still go up, but at the moment there's some indication that the numbers may be levelling off."
Prof Milne said the rise in cases over recent weeks had been expected for three reasons: the end of restrictions, the impact of the so-called "stealth Omicron" BA.2 subvariant, and waning immunity in some who have had vaccines.
He said: "The first one is that in any model I have ever seen, when restrictions are removed, you will see a bump in cases as people change their behaviour. The second reason is that we are seeing the dominance of the BA2 sub-variant. It's not more severe but it is more infectious and than the other sub-variant we have seen [of Omicron].
"The tests going through the PCR lab in Gateshead are somewhere in the 80% range of being positive for BA.2. It's the dominant sub-variant by some distance. It's great infectivity will have driven some of the increase. The third factor is some waning of immunity. But as for the balance between these, it's very difficult to say. But what's common to all three is that we wouldn't, at this stage, expect to see increases continuing unless there was to be another variant as well."
Though the soon-to-retire public health expert sounded an optimistic note, he did raise concerns that the loss of much of the UK's Covid testing infrastructure could see problems down the line.
"We need to keep an eye on new variants," he said. "And there are some worries about the flow of data going forward with the changes in testing and how that will change the way in which we report on them."
Speaking directly about the Covid Control Plan, which was drawn up in the early months of the pandemic and implemented from June 2020, Prof Milne said it was time to reassess it in light of the Government's Living with Covid plan. He said: "Now is the appropriate time to step back to green alert, based on these criteria, but I would also think it makes sense to move away from this kind of approach and consider now how we will manage Covid over the coming years."
Prof Milne did however warn that "a green response is not the absence of response, we need to remember that". The green level of alert is defined as "business as usual" with "containments of a very limited outbreak" of Covid-19. However, in the report explaining the change, Prof Milne wrote: "This grading of response may no longer be fit for purpose in continued response and resilience."
The City Futures Board agreed that the plan would be revised "to consider the needs of the city for continued Covid protection and response in the light of changed circumstances and the need for preparedness against resurgence / variants / further waves of disease and of health protection responses".
Prof Milne drew attention to Newcastle's success at limiting "excess deaths" during the Covid-19 pandemic, the city had a rate of these far lower than the national average. He said the reasons for this were "quite complex".
"It'll be the fuel of PhDs," he said. "But I think the performance of Newcastle Hospitals throughout the pandemic has been remarkable - the Covid mortality rate has been incredibly low." He also cited the city's "partnership approach".
Outgoing council leader Coun Nick Forbes - who will be step down from the council at the coming local elections having been deselected - echoed this. He added: "I think one of the reasons for this is the sense of partnership we have had - the collaboration and the sense of pulling together as a city.
"There's the way in which residents here have pulled together when asked to, despite the suffering and the problems that may have caused them. I think that's all demonstrable by the number of people alive in this city that would otherwise have been the case. And in terms of the Covid control plan, it's important to note that stepping the alert level back down to green doesn't give the sign that everything is back to normal. Our vigilance and preparation for further waves need to be as sharp as ever."
