Covid reaches ‘eye-watering’ levels in South London, says pubic health boss
By Tara O’Connor, Local Democracy Reporter
A public health boss has warned that those hospitalised with Covid-19 could increase in the coming weeks after the capital reaches ‘eye-watering’ infection levels.
Merton is currently recording more than 300 new coronavirus cases daily.
At a council meeting on Tuesday (December 14) night the council’s director of public health gave an update on the situation.
Dr Dagmar Zeuner said: “It is quite eye watering numbers in London, there are about 12,000 cases a day, that is mirrored in Merton with initially 100 to 300 cases a day now.
“The main distribution is still younger people, we had lots of outbreaks in school aged children. It is spilling over into younger adults, we assume this is people who are around kids, their parents.”
For the seven days up to December 8 there was a case rate of 605 per 100,000 people. This was up from 497 cases per 100,000 the previous week.
Dr Zeuner warned that while those ending up in hospital were currently “steady” they could increase in the coming weeks.
She said: “Hospitalisations have been steady and they are steady at the moment, but is too early, we know that hospitalisations lag behind the infections.”
As of Tuesday, December 14, there were 31 coronavirus being cared for at Epsom and St Helier hospitals, which are both part of the same NHS trust.
Of the 31, two are on ventilation and six people were admitted in the latest daily NHS stats.
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