Vaccination site to be opened at Ripon racecourse

A vaccination site will be set up at Ripon racecourse, health bosses revealed this morning.

Amanda Bloor, accountable officer for NHS North Yorkshire CCG, told a North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum press briefing the site will open next week.

No further details are available yet.

Jonathan Mullin, marketing manager at Ripon Races, told the Stray Ferret vaccinations would take place on separate days to race days and the course’s fixtures were unaffected by the news.

Ripon Races has 15 fixtures scheduled this year, starting on April 15.

Meetings took place behind closed doors last year and there is still no news on when people may be allowed to attend.

Last week Ripon City Council called for the city to get its own vaccination site and suggested the Hugh Ripley Hall would be a suitable location.

Days later, the Local Resilience Forum confirmed it intended to open a site in Ripon but hadn’t identified a location. Today it confirmed the racecourse had been chosen.

Health bosses also revealed at the meeting that 107,752 vaccinations have been carried out across North Yorkshire and York since the programme started in December.

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Harrogate district reports 79 further coronavirus cases

The Harrogate district has had a further 79 cases of coronavirus confirmed, according to today’s Public Health England figures.

It takes the total number of cases since the start of the pandemic to 6,163.

The seven-day average rate of infection for the district stands at 325 people per 100,000.

The county-wide average is 303 and the national rate 467.

Killinghall and Hampsthwaite remains the area in the district with the most covid infections in the past seven-days, with 60 cases.

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Amanda Bloor, accountable officer at North Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group, told a press briefing of the North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum today that 44 covid patients were currently being treated at Harrogate District Hospital.

Hospitals across the county have 471 positive covid patients — an increase of 84 on last week.

The current figure is 169 more than the peak of the first lockdown.

No further deaths from patients who tested positive for coronavirus have been reported at Harrogate District Hospital, according to NHS England data.

North Yorkshire tier downgrade next week unlikely, say health chiefs

North Yorkshire’s leading public health experts have cautioned against hopes the county could be downgraded to tier one before Christmas.

The government is due to review the tier system next week.

North Yorkshire, which is in tier two, has a seven-day average infection rate of 103 people per 100,000. This is considerably below the England average of 151.

The Harrogate district’s average is even lower at 93. It fell sharply in the second half of November but has stabilised lately.

Some local areas have seen virtually no infections for weeks but pubs and restaurants have stayed shut because of the tier restrictions.

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This morning Richard Webb, director of adult care at North Yorkshire County Council, told a media briefing of North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum, which represents key groups in the fight against covid, that case figures were “relatively stable”.

But he said they were still higher than he would like and the county needed to continue to get them down.

Mr Webb said:

“I suspect we may well see caution prevail just simply because everyone is worried about a spike in the New Year.

“But, let’s see. It is all to play for.”

Meanwhile, Dr Lincoln Sergeant, director of public health at the council, said he hoped the county will be downgraded after Christmas.

He added the county needed to get infections down.

Dr Sergeant said:

“It’s important for us to keep the momentum going. I think we can aim for getting to tier one, it’s certainly within possibility if we keep momentum going and if we keep working together.

“But we should not be disappointed if that doesn’t happen before Christmas.”

The briefing also revealed seven sites across North Yorkshire are expected to start offering the coronavirus vaccine from next week.

North Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group, the body which buys medical services in the county, said it will reveal the location of the sites once they are finalised.

R number falls below 1 in the Harrogate district

The R number has fallen below one in the Harrogate district for the first time since the second wave of the pandemic took off.

The number has fallen to 0.9 — anything below one means the spread of the virus is declining.

Infection rates have fallen dramatically in the second half of November and are now lower than they were at the start of lockdown.

Public Health England confirmed another 36 infections in the district today.

However, leading public health figures suggested at a media briefing today of North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum, a partnership of agencies that tackles emergencies, the county could be put in tier two or even tier three tomorrow.

However, the national government will decide.

Such a move would devastate many pubs that do not serve substantial meals, as they would be unable to open.

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Today’s briefing also revealed Harrogate District Hospital currently has 31 covid patients, which is four more than last week.

North Yorkshire as a whole has 272 covid patients. There were 302 at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in spring.

No deaths were reported at Harrogate District Hospital today. However, there were four in the previous three days, bringing the total to 98.

A total of 54 care homes in the county currently have covid outbreaks.

Pupil attendance in schools is 87 per cent.

Central Harrogate has had the most positive cases in the Harrogate district in the last seven days, with 23.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Pateley Bridge and Nidd Valley has had none.

Tier one ‘did not work’, says North Yorkshire public health boss

North Yorkshire’s top public health boss has said tier one lockdown restrictions “did not work” and had “no teeth”.

Dr Lincoln Sargeant, director of public health at the county council, said the measures did not give people “a sense of seriousness about the situation”.

The England lockdown is due to end on December 2 and county council leaders said they expect to hear from ministers on what restrictions will be introduced at the end of next week.

North Yorkshire was under tier one restrictions, which meant people followed national guidance with no further restrictions.

But Dr Sargeant told a press briefing of the North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum, a partnership of emergency agencies, that those in tier two restrictions tackled coronavirus better.

He said:

“There are some things we know for certain. Tier one did not really work, it did not give the public a sense of the seriousness of the situation.

“It just did not have the teeth. We were saying that for some time, we were saying that the issues in North Yorkshire were around household spread and mixing.

“It was not until tier two that you really had measures that would address that particular issue.”

He added that there needed to be “consistency and consensus” from political leaders over what the restrictions will be after lockdown in order for the public to take measures seriously.

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Meanwhile, Dr Sargeant said data appeared to show infections were “plateauing”, but stopped short of saying lockdown measures had worked.

He said:

“We are hopefully beginning to see, particularly in the data around hospitalisations, perhaps the beginning of a plateauing.

“I am very hesitant to say that this is definitely showing a sustained effect of lockdown. We expect to see the effect of lockdown beginning to show this week into next.

“But there is some suggestion that we might be levelling off and we need to keep watching that and hope that it is sustained.”

The briefing also revealed the number of covid patients at Harrogate District Hospital has remained flat. Currently, 27 people are being treated compared with 28 last week.

Harrogate’s testing site on Dragon Road is averaging 180 tests per day, well below its capacity of 320.

Yesterday, Public Health England figures showed a further 48 positive tests in the district, taking the total cases since March up to 3,204.

Following a change by Public Health England into how it records cases, the total number of cases in the district has fallen by 201.

Positive tests are now recorded by where the test is carried out, instead of where the person is registered with the NHS.