Cumbria health chief feels 'positive' as care home deaths fall but warns 'coronavirus is still out there'

But Colin Cox, Cumbria's director of public health, rejected any suggestion that the county had suffered disproportionately, saying that its infection and death rates were not exceptional given Cumbria's population profile.

As of yesterday, the county’s ‘all settings’ figure for COVID-19 deaths stood at 546.

Morecambe Bay health trust, which runs Westmorland General Hospital in Kendal, has reported 166 deaths.

The death toll in care homes in the county is currently said to be 223.

But there is clear evidence that care home outbreaks of the virus are being stamped out successfully, with just five homes currently affected across Cumbria - down from a high of 28 when the infection was most widespread.

“The message is that this has not gone away and while we may be on low numbers the virus is still circulating," said Mr Cox.

“We need to make sure - even as we’re releasing some of the lockdown measures - that we’re doing so carefully and everybody is still trying to maintain some degree of physical distancing.

"Fundamentally, the transmission mechanisms [for coronavirus] remain the same.

"It’s a timely reminder that it’s still there.”

Mr Cox said local officials already have powers to manage small local outbreaks of the virus but the aim would be to manage such situations “by consent” and not by compulsion.

In the near future he hopes to get “in a timely way” postcode level data about the virus’s presence in local communities, allowing officials to respond quickly.

On care homes, he said: “We’re down to five or six care homes with infections, which is very positive, and the number of deaths in care homes is down to very low numbers. That too is very positive news.”

He predicted the UK will move into a phase of there being not a single epidemic but a series of small outbreaks. The only way that can be managed is by shifting responsibility for managing those outbreaks to local officials, he said.