Merton health chief reveals cases are stuck at nearly 300 per 100,000 people

Around 80 people in Merton are testing positive for Covid-19 each day, prompting warnings to stay safe.

Lead for Covid-19 resilience at the council Barry Causer told a meeting on Wednesday night (September 1) that infections are being driven by the delta variant in people aged 16-29.

He said: “We seem to be a little bit stuck, our seven day rate is hovering between 250 to 300 cases per 100,000 residents.

“This is a bit higher than we’d hoped to be so we don’t want to get stuck here.

The holiday period is coming to an end, people will be returning to work and schools are starting to reopen so there is going to be more mixing.

“It is that real note of caution, we can see what happened in Scotland, a few weeks after the schools opened and people returned to work they had a sharp increase in their infections.”

He added that it is important to keep stressing the “stay safe message” to Merton locals as the summer holidays end.

The increase in infections has led to a slight increase in coronavirus patients being treated in hospital.

Across South West London there were 167 patients being treated in the week ending August 23, with 23 of these in ICU.

This compares to 138 and 17 respectively in the week before.

Mr Causer said: “This is nowhere near the numbers we saw earlier in the pandemic that is due to the success of the vaccination programme.”

Since the start of the pandemic 490 people have died as a result of Covid-19 in the borough and 115,000 people Merton residents received two vaccination jabs so far.