Christmas may have put people off covid tests, say South Tyneside health chiefs

Health chiefs say some people may have been avoiding covid tests in the run up to Christmas

Families and friends had expected to be able to meet over a five-day period of relaxed COVID-19 regulations over the holiday period, later reduced to just one day.

And health chiefs in South Tyneside have speculated this could have contributed to a surge in the bourgh’s infection rate later in December 2020.

RELATED: These are the latest covid figures for South Tyneside

“We saw a pre-Christmas slump [in the case rate],” said Tom Hall, director of public health at South Tyneside Council.

“I strongly suspect however that that was more related to a drop in testing as people were gearing up for Christmas, not necessarily wanting to get tested and then ultimately having to self-isolate over the Christmas period.

“We saw a dip down to a low point of about 350 cases per week then we saw a post-Christmas spike, a large increase in the number of positives between the Christmas and New Year periods and higher rates of cases, up to a high point of about 800 cases per week in South Tyneside.”

Hall was speaking at a meeting of the borough council’s Health and Wellbeing Board on January 13, which was held by videolink and broadcast via YouTube.

Following the Christmas high, case rates started to fall once more in the New Year, with the latest data, which is yet to be validated and made public, suggesting the decline has continued through January so far.

However, health chiefs have insisted more information is needed to confirm whether infections have started to fall once more and whether the latest national lockdown is having an effect.

More details are also needed on the spread of the new, more infectious variant of the virus, which estimates have suggested could have accounted for almost a third of new cases in South Tyneside by the end of December.

Hall added: “We know [the new variant] has taken hold in a much more aggressive way in London and the South East, but we don’t know yet whether that will start to surge in our region as well and bring cases back up.

“We will wait and see what the data is on the new variant, which should be fed into our system in the next couple of days, giving us an indication of how far it has spread in [the North East].”

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