Health bosses in Newcastle and Gateshead have warned "we'll need to watch" rates of Covid in children - especially those at primary school - which are still rising, even as rates of Omicron infection across the population begin to fall.
Speaking at a meeting of the Newcastle Gateshead NHS CCG, Andy Graham and Michelle Stamp - public health consultants with Gateshead and Newcastle councils respectively - both shared positive news suggesting we are past the peak of the Omicron Covid-19 wave.
However they also explained there were still considerable numbers of new cases in the under 15s in both areas.
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Michelle said though Covid cases had fallen and case rates in Newcastle and Gateshead were both among the lowest in the North East, we were "starting to see an increase" in positive cases among those aged zero to 15.
As of January 21, the rate of Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people in Newcastle was 1,173, with Gateshead at 1174.5.
But among the age group of five to nine-year-olds, in Newcastle it is a masive 2,837.4 per 100,000, and in Gateshead it's up to 2,698.2.
She also said that, along with care homes, public health teams were working hard to contain outbreaks in schools.
Andy echoed this, and asked whether rising cases in children would necessarily lead to another spike in adults, he said: "The honest answer to that is we don't know it - as is the case so much with the pandemic and the different variants of Covid-19.
"What we're seeing though, is that, overall, those those numbers in the other age groups are coming down. And there has been at a very high transmission rate, so there will be immunity out there.
"If we can continue to get people jabbed we will see less people being ill, which is the true measure we would work by. But it's a muddy picture, and the fact that people who are asymptomatic but test positive on a lateral flow test don't need a complimentary PCR test means that we'll know less than less about this picture.
"That it's gone up in children is something we'll need to watch and if that becomes a longer term trend, and we start to see other things tick up, that will be a concern."
