Director of Public Health Health Protection Assurance Report

COVID-19 infections

The success of the COVID-19 vaccine programme is evident in the reduction of hospital admissions and community transmission of COIVD-19. However,COVID-19 continues to circulate highlighting the continued importance of the vaccine programme

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) infection survey (10 February 2023), delivered by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) provides the percentage of people testing positive for Coronavirus (COVID-19), at 1.56% of the population or around 1 in 65 people

COVID-19 positive patients are monitored in hospitals to understand the pressures on the local NHS, and to provide an indication of the impact of the infection on the local population. The below diagram highlights how local hospital admissions fluctuate coinciding with infection levels in the community.


A line graph showing the number of confirmed COVID-19 patients occupying beds as of 8am from 2020 to 2023. The y-axis represents the number of patients, ranging from 0 to 200 in increments of 50. The x-axis represents the years, marked as 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. The graph shows several peaks and troughs over this period, with notable spikes in patient numbers around early and mid-2021 and smaller fluctuations throughout late 2021 to early 2023

COVID-19 is a notifiable disease. Most notified incidents continue to be in care homes as shown below.

Chart 1: SARS – CoV-2 - Number of SARS -CoV-2 infection incidents reported to the local Health Protection team by setting – Northeast 2022- 2023 – 9 February 2023


A bar chart showing the number of ARI (Acute Respiratory Infection) incidents over different report weeks. The x-axis represents the 'Date of report week' ranging from week 40 to week 38, and the y-axis represents the 'Number of ARI incidents.' The bars are color-coded based on different settings: Care Home, Educational settings, Hospital, Other, and Prison.

Nationally the wastewater testing coverage data for the Environmental Monitoring for Health Protection (EMHP) programme - led by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and run in partnership with Defra, the Environment Agency, CEFAS, academia and water companies – tests sewage in England for fragments of SARS-CoV-2 RNA.

The programme helps identify where the virus is circulating in England, detecting spikes in prevalence. It has the benefit of detecting the virus in asymptomatic individuals.

The programme now plays an important role in the detection of mutations of the virus, variants of concern (VOCs) and variants under investigation (VUIs). The wastewater surveillance programme routinely sequences samples from sewers across the country to provide a national and local view of the presence of mutations and variants. The programme now provides coverage to approximately 74% of the population of England.

Following the findings of poliovirus in sewage samples collected from the London Beckton Sewage Treatment Works, which covers parts of North and East London, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) expanded the surveillance to a range of areas outside of the capital including Newcastle Upon Tyne which included North Tyneside residents. There have been no reported incidents in North Tyneside and the polio vaccine uptake is high in infants.