Weekly Coronavirus cases have slightly decreased on the previous 7 days, with 279 more individuals testing positive in Loughborough – down from 291 from the week before.
Of the positive cases confirmed last week across Loughborough, just 63 were located in the Loughborough University area, down from 90 the week before.
The news comes after warnings from Mike Sandys, the county council’s director of public health, who has said that Charnwood must bring rates down to around 150 per 100,000 people for the county to return to Tier One post-lockdown.
Overall, the town now reports a case rate of 395 per 100,000 people, with Charnwood reporting a rate of 359, both down slightly on the previous week.
He said a rate of 150-200 could tip Charnwood into Tier Two, and that the current rate could mean Tier Three restrictions after December 2nd.
The University has separately reported 83 positive cases in the last 10 days amongst the student population through their ‘Connect & Protect’ system, down from 194 cases reported a week ago.
On Wednesday, the University reported no cases on campus for the first time since the start of the programme.
Elsewhere in Loughborough, Shelthorpe and Woodthorpe has seen a dramatic case rise up to 70 cases (up 41), with other small rises seen in the Garendon and Dishley areas.
Across Charnwood, 667 new cases were reported last week, down 119 compared to the week before. This is despite a change in the reporting method from Public Health England, which has seen a general rise in student areas after addresses given at the point of testing started to be used on recording, rather than the details registered on an individual’s NHS Record.
To help in the fight against COVID-19, the Local Council has announced that they are in “negotiations with the NHS about using its offices in Loughborough as a potential Covid-19 vaccination centre.”
The news follows the announcements from several pharmaceutical companies announcing that they have developed successful vaccines for COVID-19.
The Council says that they “will do anything we can to support the battle against this virus” and “would be proud to play our part in the vaccination programme.”
With the lockdown not having much effect on the numbers thus far, it has become even more important for Loughborough to be at the centre of a successful vaccination programme.
In addition, the government has promised free, fast “lateral flow tests” with a rapid turnaround meaning “results within an hour”, which will become available in Loughborough sometime during the week of 23rdNovember and will be used to test students returning home for Christmas.
This will pre-empt the end of in-person teaching in both Loughborough and London from Wednesday 9th December, in line with new Government rules.
At that point, all lectures and seminars will move online where possible until the end of term, following existing timetables.
But until then, the University will remain open and teaching will continue to current arrangements. The Library and other academic facilities will remain open as will essential shops such as the LSU outlets remaining open.
Whilst cases in student areas are generally continuing to decline, cases Shelthorpe and Woodthorpe have rapidly increased over the last 7 days of data, with more cases than all student-majority areas.
This will undoubtedly cause concern for residents who had previously seen a reduction in the area in previous weeks.
Label will be updating the figures on our Loughborough Coronavirus Map every weekday with the latest figures, and will post weekly updates on the latest situation across the town each Thursday.
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Notes on Methodology
Cases at the local-level are split into Middle Super Output Areas (MSOAs) – small areas with around 7,200 average population.
Counts of between 0 and 2 cases per MSOA are shown as ‘0-2’, to protect the identity of those who have tested positive in that area, and therefore no data is available until cases hit 3 in each MSOA.
Data is collected by Public Health England here, and is updated every 7 days for each calendar week, at a 5 day delay. Weekly data is now published on Fridays. You can download a copy of the latest data for Loughborough here. Data reproduced under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
