How South Tyneside's coronavirus case count is doing as borough enters tenth week of lockdown

The third lockdown was announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday, January 4, and officially came into effect two days later.

Today, Wednesday, March 10, marks nine weeks since the new regulations were formally adopted, so how is the borough faring as we enter the tenth week of restrictions?

As in the rest of the country, the number of coronavirus cases in South Tyneside had risen sharply in the month or so before the third lockdown officially started.

There were just 48 new cases confirmed in the borough on December 1, a number which had more than trebled by December 29, when the case count hit 171.

On the day the new lockdown formally began, January 6, that had come down but the numbers remained worryingly high. There were still 86 new cases in the borough and the case count would remain stubbornly high for the rest of the month. It would peak at 90 on January 11 and not dip continuously below 30 per day until almost the end of February.

In comparison, today has seen just 26 new cases confirmed in the borough, a fall of 60 – or nearly 70 per cent – since the official start of lockdown.

The weekly case rate in the borough has also fallen sharply since the new restrictions were first applied.

The latest figures, for the seven days up to March 5 (the last five days are excluded in case of inaccuracies) show there were 107 new cases in total in South Tyneside, an average of 70.9 new infections per 100,000 people.

By contrast, in the seven days to January 1 (the most recent figures available at the start of the third lockdown), there were 749 new cases, the equivalent of 496.1 per 100,000 head of population.

The coronavirus death rate in South Tyneside’s hospital trust has also fallen sharply during lockdown.

There were eight virus-related fatalities confirmed in the South Tyneside and Sunderland trust on the day the third lockdown started. Today there were just two virus deaths.

And there were 223 patients hospitalised with the virus on January 6, down to 83 in the latest figures.

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