ON Tuesday September 14, the English Covid19 case rate was 332 per 100,000 , the North West regional average was 373 per 100,000 and Blackburn with Darwen was 323 per 100,000.

Over the previous week, all were showing a general slow rise in case rates.

Covid hospitalisation rates in East Lancashire Hospitals Trust had also risen over the week to 48 inpatients. Sixteen were from Blackburn with Darwen aged from one to 85 with 12 out of the 16 aged over 50. Of the in-patients whose vaccination status was recorded, 50 per cent had two jabs and 50 per cent no jabs even though most were eligible for vaccination.

Of the Blackburn with Darwen cases over the past week for which we have full records, 11 per cent were children aged 12 to 15. This group is now to be vaccinated following a further review and advice to ministers from the UK chief medical officers. This vaccination programme will be delivered mainly through school settings. Parents will be asked for their consent although in some circumstances, where the child is competent to decide, they can make their own decision regardless of parental preference. No child will be vaccinated without consent and vaccination is not mandatory.

The vaccination of this group will have impacts beyond the 12 to 15 age group themselves. At peak times over the last 18 months of the pandemic, Blackburn with Darwen identified that about 50 per cent of all cases were acquired through ‘household transmission’. Often this involved an asymptomatic child or young adult in the household unknowingly passing on the virus to the rest of the family. Vaccination can reduce the likelihood of transmission by up to 50 per cent, and so reduce overall population level case rates. But vaccination cannot eliminate all transmission risk.

Evidence from the Office of National statistics published last week showed that in England there were 51,000 Covid deaths between January and July 2021. Only 256 of these deaths were from people who had two doses of any of the vaccines currently in use in the UK. This is very reassuring news. It is one of the key reasons for a very heavy dependency on vaccination rather than other prevention measures to control the impact of the virus in the Covid Winter Plan announced on Tuesday. The Covid Winter Plan will operate a Plan A with a Plan B to be triggered if Plan A goes pear shaped and we need to step up the mitigations to stop the NHS being overwhelmed. Further lockdowns are judged highly unlikely- but not ruled out altogether.

The English Covid Winter Plan is based on taking a mitigation approach to risk rather than a preventive one- acting when trouble appears, rather than acting to keep trouble at bay.

With high and rising cases now and the knowledge that the Covid case rate went up by a factor of five in September last year, many will judge that putting almost all our eggs in the vaccination protection basket is a bit risky. Only time will tell whether it might it have been wiser to keep some infection control measures in place in Plan A.

SAGE suggests that measures such as mask wearing in public places, working from home where possible and vaccine passports would suppress or slow down the rate of increase and that could help us avoid or delay the need to take harsher measures later in the year.

That approach has not been taken by government so we must now all do our best to make the current Plan A work.