Thread by @_johnbye

Update on the situation in Bolton, courtesy of the covid dashboard.

First up, cases are still rising rapidly. Daily case numbers are almost back to the peak they reached during the second wave that hit the North West hard in the autumn.

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?…

This is despite 65% of Bolton's adult population now having had one vaccine dose and 37% having had both.

Not far behind the national average (70% / 40%).

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccin…

Probably at least in part thanks to vaccinations, infection rates are still relatively low amongst the over 60s.

But they are now clearly rising.

Note: this data is a few days older than the raw case numbers, so the rates will be even higher now.

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?…

Zooming in shows more clearly how cases in the over 60s have accelerated recently.

As cases usually work their way up the age groups over time, this is something to keep an eye on. Is vaccination enough to stop them rising much further, despite the more transmissible variant?

Meanwhile patient numbers in hospital with covid at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust (including Royal Bolton Hospital) remain very low, but are now rising too.

Again, as they always lag behind cases we have to hope vaccination keeps them from rising as steeply as last autumn.

The rise has prompted the hospital to open up an additional ward for covid positive patients, with the expectation that the recent surge in cases will inevitably result in more people arriving in hospital over the coming weeks.

And at the other end of the scale, infection rates amongst school age children are currently higher than for any other age group, and higher than they've been in any previous wave.

1 in 135 children in Bolton aged 10-14 tested positive last week alone.