COVID rates going back up in the last week
25/02/2021
The Cherwell District was the only part of Oxfordshire to have increases in cases last week
Six weeks of falling COVID infection rates in the Banbury FM area have been halted after figures for last week showed small increases once again. The latest data comes in the same week as Prime Minister Boris Johnson revealed his road map out of lockdown – subject to COVID figures continuing to fall.
In the seven days up to February 19 there were 94 new COVID-19 cases locally, up from 69 the previous week. Prior to that infection rates had halved and were down from a pandemic high of 994 at the start of the year.
The Cherwell District is now the only district in Oxfordshire with increasing infection rates.
In Banbury some areas were close to being clear of new infections. However small increases rather than decreases have been seen in Easington, Hardwick and Ruscote.
Small increases were also seen in Bodicote, Adderbury and Bloxham.
Brackley saw new infection rates fall to just 10.
For a second week there were no new cases in Cropredy, Wroxton and Shennington, Middleton Cheney and Chipping Warden, and Sibford, Hook Norton and Milcombe.
However Kings Sutton, Greatworth and Evenley recorded 5 new cases last week after being clear the previous week.
Oxfordshire County Council’s Director of Public Health, Ansaf Azhar, said: “We realise that everybody is yearning to get their lives back to some sense of normality as soon as possible. However, we should all be aware that relaxing too soon takes us further away from that normality in the long-run.
“We know that the roadmap is dependent on continued progress with infection rates and the number of hospital admissions, as well as the rollout of the vaccination programme. It’s in our own interests as individuals, colleagues and families to get cases as low as we possibly can so that we can gradually emerge from lockdown with the confidence that COVID-19 will not surge out of control.”
In the Cherwell District the infection rate currently stands at 103 per 100,000 of the population – up from 82.4 last week. Cherwell was the only district in Oxfordshire to see increases in the rate of infections in the last seven days.
Published: by the Banbury FM News Team
