Coronavirus: Cases among students in Newcastle 'contained effectively'

Huge coronavirus outbreaks at Newcastle's universities have been "contained very effectively", according to the city's public health director.

Prof Eugene Milne revealed data showing a substantial fall in new Covid-19 cases recorded among young people.

Newcastle and Northumbria universities have both been hit with major outbreaks with thousands of cases reported since mid-September.

The North East is currently in Tier 2 in the government's lockdown rules.

Graphs presented to leaders on Tuesday showed how at one stage there were around 330 cases being reported in 15 to 24-year-olds every day, but that number is down to around 70.

Newcastle City Council has published a new Covid-19 dashboard, adding in cases of students whose positive tests had previously been attributed to their home address rather than university accommodation, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

Prof Milne hailed the "remarkable" drop in new infections over the last couple of weeks.

Questions had previously been raised over why the number of cases reported by the universities was not being reflected in the official Public Health England figures.

Prof Milne said even though the peak of new infections was higher than first thought, numbers are still dropping "in exactly the same way" regardless of which data is used.

He praised the vast majority of students for self-isolating.

"I know there is a visible number who don't do that and have caused worries and problems, but actually you don't see the people who are complying," he said.

"A large number of students have done that and we should be grateful for that too.

The number of infections among other age groups had remained significantly lower, though there had been an increase across the board.

The meeting also heard that there remains a low and steady number of Covid patients in intensive care units.

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