Health bosses in Newcastle think the city may be "over the Omicron peak", but have warned that schools and social care settings are still seeing "challenging" outbreaks of the dominant Covid-19 variant.
Speaking at a meeting of Newcastle City Council's City Futures Board, the city's director of public health Professor Eugene Milne explained that, on Tuesday, the rate of Covid positive cases was down to 1,371 per 100,000 over seven days - and on "a downward trend".
Later, Caroline Docking - assistant chief executive at the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust - said the number of Covid-19 patients on the city's wards seemed to have peaked too, and she said staff absence had also fallen.
