The North East has the UK's highest hospital admission rate for Covid-19 - but official figures show the virus's impact has been decreasing through October.
The latest Covid-19 data shows that while new subvariants continue to cause concern, the virus is still having much less of an impact on our hospitals than during previous waves.
That said, the UK Health Security Agency's surveillance highlights that the hospital admission rate in our region is 11.49 per 100,000 people in the population. However, the national figure has fallen week-on-week again - and is just 7.78 (down from 9.82).
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Health experts fear a "twindemic" fuelled by a worse-than-usual flu season could hit the UK, as the Covid-19 virus continues to circulate. As it stands at the latest Office for National Statistics estimates suggest around one in 35 people had Covid in the week leading up to October 24.
In the North East , the ONS suggests just 3% of people had the virus in that week. By comparison, by November 13 last year, just 1.5% of people in our region were testing positive, the ONS thought. That of course changed rapidly as Omicron took hold.
Now, as MirrorOnline reports, the ONS figures show infections in the over-70s rising while two new subvariants, the BQ.1 variant and the XBB, have been detected in the UK. More than 700 cases of the BQ.1 variant have been logged across the country and a further 18 cases of the XBB have also been recorded. XBB spreads quickly and appears to evade people's vaccine protection.
However, Neither of the new strain BQ.1 or XBB have been listed as variants of concern by the UK Health Security Agency. Dr Meera Chand, director of clinical and emerging infection at the UKHSA said: "It is not unexpected to see new variants of SARS-CoV-2 emerge.
"Neither BQ.1 nor XBB have been designated as Variants of Concern and UKHSA is monitoring the situation closely, as always."
XBB is understood to have spread rapidly in Singapore and Hong Kong. Singapore's Ministry of Health said it went from being responsible for 22 per cent of cases, to being responsible for 54 per cent of cases within one week. Almost 80 per cent of people in Singapore are fully vaccinated.
In our hospitals, the number of hospitalisations has fallen again over the week to November 2. In the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust' s wards at the RVI and the Freeman, there were 62 Covid-19 positive patients in hospital, but just one requiring a ventilation bed. This figure rose steadily through September and early October, but has fallen from 80 a week earlier.
By comparison, there were 106 positive patients at the South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Trust , (big fall), 55 at Northumbria Healthcare' s hospitals across North Tyneside and Northumberland, 71 in the QE Hospital in Gateshead and 75 in County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust hospitals .
The latter two trusts have seen levels stay stable over the past week, but South Tyneside and Sunderland and Northumbria have seen similarly drops in positive patients as in Newcastle. The number of patients in intensive care or requiring ventilation support is minimal - and these figures account for patients "incidentally" found to be positive.
That means they have been admitted to hospital for reasons other than Covid-19.
Dr Mary Ramsay, Director of Public Health Programmes at UKHSA, said: "The continued success of the vaccination programme means that COVID-19 cases and hospitalisation rates are still falling across the UK.
"This is excellent news, but we need to make sure that we remain protected through the winter. We are urging everyone to come forward and take up all the vaccine doses for which they are eligible as soon as possible."
When it comes to flu, the UKHSA's Dr Conall Watson urged parents to get their children vaccinated. He said: ""We’re now seeing flu spreading in all age groups over recent weeks.
"Children aged 2 to 3 may have little natural immunity to flu and can become severely ill. The recent flu season in Australia saw a high number of children hospitalised and there have already been intensive care admissions of young children in the UK."
The agency's figures also show increasing rates of the worrying Respiratory Syntactical Virus (RSV) in children, though this is often seen as the winter months draw in.
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