The rate of new coronavirus cases in Brighton and Hove has almost halved in a week although health chiefs still regard the numbers as high enough to cause concern.
There were 757 new cases in the seven days to Monday 25 January or a rate of 260.2 per 100,000 people in Brighton and Hove.
This compares with 1,228 cases in the previous seven-day period or a rate of 422.2 per 100,000 people.
In the week before that – to Monday 11 January – there were 1,816 new cases in Brighton and Hove, or a rate of 624.3 per 100,000 people.
The director of public health in Brighton and Hove. Alistair Hill, told a Brighton and Hove City Council meeting on Thursday (28 January) that the death toll was likely to keep rising in the coming weeks.
He said that 279 people had died from the start of last April to Friday 15 January with covid-19 on their death certificate. There were also about a couple of dozen deaths in March last year.
The local NHS hospital trust, Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals, has so far recorded 376 deaths of patients who have tested positive for the virus in the previous 28 days.
The figures cover from the start of the pandemic to yesterday (Friday 29 January) and include the Royal Sussex County Hospital, in Brighton, as well as the Princess Royal Hospital, in Haywards Heath.
Of those, 28 people died in the seven days to yesterday compared with 41in the previous seven days, up to and including Friday 22 January.
Mr Hill said that the vaccination programme was well under way but added: “Social distancing remains absolutely vital for the foreseeable future.”
