A PUBLIC health official has revealed her concerns about the “climbing” rate of infection in Slough residents aged 60 and over.

At an outbreak engagement board on November 10 (Tuesday), figures up to October 30 showed how many people were testing positive for coronavirus per week – with elderly people in the borough seeing an infection rate of 162.9 per 100,000 population.

Sue Foley, public health consultant for Slough Borough Council, said: “The one we really need to be concerned about is the case rate for those aged 60 years and over because that is still climbing and that is still high.

“Unfortunately, that is where things to start to move into people having hospital admissions because those aged 60 and over are the most vulnerable to hospital admissions for Covid-19.”

The data also revealed young people aged 17 to 21 had a high infection rate of 433.8 per 100,000 population – which “jumped out” to councillor Robert Anderson (Labour: Britwell and Northborough), cabinet member for transport and environmental services.

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He said the figures “looked like something you would see in the North West” and asked if that’s a normal rate of infection for that age group.

Sue Foley said: “It’s something for the analysts to take away to see where and why that should be true for that particular age group.

“I will circulate later as to what the thinking is around that and how we can mitigate it as well. They look at students and out of area students – but that’s not a high percentage.”

The data also showed the weekly average of people testing positive for coronavirus was 10.3 per cent with seven outbreaks of the virus in the last seven days before October 30.

Councillor Mohammed Nazir (Labour: Baylis and Stoke), cabinet member for housing, said this was a “worrying trend” – but Sue Foley said with the national lockdown in place, they should see the trend starting to go down in two weeks time as there’s usually a “lag” in data collection.

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In the report, the council formulated a strategy to reduce the rate of community transmission as much as possible during the month-long national lockdown period.

This involves building up communications and community engagement with residents, particularly through the community Covid champions, on the latest guidance, how to keep safe and where to find support, emphasising the NHS is still open, and dispelling any coronavirus confusion and myths.

Other plans includes ensuring “testing is available at the right place and time” for the community with the results coming back in a timely manner as well as working with the government, Public Health England, and the military to ramp up testing.