Communities in rural Northumberland warned against Covid complacency after spike in cases in west of county

A councillor has warned rural Northumberland communities against complacency despite their relatively low levels of Covid-19.
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Cllr Guy Renner-Thompson, chairman of Belford Parish Council, was speaking following the decision to keep Northumberland in Tier 3.

Latest figures show there were fewer than five positive Covid-19 cases in the Bamburgh ward, which incorporates Belford, in the week up to December 20 with an infection rate of 66 per 100,000.

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Case numbers are similarly low in the surrounding wards of Norham and Islandshire, Wooler and Longhoughton.

Cllr Guy Renner-Thompson, chairman of Belford Parish Council.Cllr Guy Renner-Thompson, chairman of Belford Parish Council.
Cllr Guy Renner-Thompson, chairman of Belford Parish Council.

However, there has been a recent spike in cases in the west of the county, with the rate in Haltwhistle ward currently at 1,058 per 100,000.

Cllr Kerry Noble, who has signed up to be a Covid-19 community champion, said: "Haltwhistle, with a small population, has some of the worst infection rates in the country. That’s scared the life out of me.”

"The Haltwhistle thing stems from a factory and Public Health won’t release the name but it shows we can’t be complacent in rural parts of the county,” said Cllr Renner-Thompson, also local county councillor.

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“They probably thought ‘we’re in the sticks, we won’t have any bother’ and all of a sudden they have. There are now more cases in the western part of the county than there are in the Ashington/Blyth/Cramlington corner.

"The authority was getting a lot of stick for the county being in Tier 3 because of the figures but the rate per 100,000 isn’t the end all. It’s also about what’s happening at the hospital in Cramlington.

"Fingers crossed, with the various vaccines, we will hopefully be back to normal at some point.”

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