THERE are no active coronavirus outbreaks in any care home in Cumbria for the first time in a year has been highlighted as 'giant leap' in the fight against the pandemic, a health boss has said.

Colin Cox, Cumbria's director of public health has claimed that significant progress has been made in the fight against coronavirus and that this is one of biggest positives to come out of the week for the health team.

"For me, the big story this week is that on Monday we declared the last two outbreaks in care homes we had over," he said.

"That puts us for the first time in a year where we have not had a single care home with an active Covid outbreak.

"That feels like a pretty remarkable situation considering the challenge we have had in care homes for around a year now.

"An active outbreak goes on for 14 days after the last case in a care home, because that is how long it could take for another case to come through, so if you had another case in another care home and they link together you declare an outbreak.

"We have had at least one care home in an outbreak for the last 12 months.

"It is a significant moment.

"The plan is to continue with this, we could not guarantee we wouldn't get another, but it does feel at this point it would be in small numbers anyway with the vaccination program behind that doing well.

"This is a giant leap in the fight against Covid."

According to NHS England an outbreak is defined as two or more residents in the care home diagnosed.

with symptoms compatible with Covid-19.

This comes after news that Covid-19 cases continued to drop with only 69 cases for the week ending April 9.

While there was some variation between districts, the infection rate in Cumbria (14 new cases per 100k), with the exception of Copeland, remains below national and regional averages. Copeland’s rate was above the national average but equal to the regional average rate. The number of patients in hospital and new admissions to hospital continues to decrease and there are no current outbreaks in care homes.

“The number of new cases remains low and that is excellent news, but we cannot take this for granted, especially now that restrictions have been eased a little more," Mr Cox said.

"I am continuing to ask people to remember to follow the social contact rules to help drive infections down even further.”

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, care homes in particular felt the impact of the virus with numerous outbreaks being recorded across the country, bringing more pressure on the government.

In response, the NHS Long Term Plan has committed to rolling out the Enhanced Health in Care Homes (EHCH) model across England by 2024, starting in 2020. This model moves away from traditional reactive models of care delivery towards proactive care that is centred on the needs of individual residents.