St Albans' COVID cases decline considerably as roadmap out of lockdown announced

As the government announced a roadmap out of lockdown on Monday, Hertfordshire County Council has announced their first steps towards end of lockdown.

At the time of publishing, St Albans had 179 confirmed coronavirus cases between February 6 and February 12, down 46 compared with the previous week, where 225 COVID cases were recorded.

Across St Albans district, there are currently 64 cases per 100,000 people; this being the first week cases have sat below 100 per 100,000 since the Herts Ad commenced these weekly bulletins.

Last week, this number sat at 121 cases per 100,000.

A total of 7,582 cases have been recorded in St Albans up to February 23.

The average area in England has 105 infections per 100,000, which again shows a significant decrease across the nation, as well as in our area.

This comes as almost 18 million people across the UK have received a dose of the coronavirus vaccine as of February 22, with over 300,000 of those administered in Herts.

Our district boasts two vaccination centres that have received national acclaim: Batchwood Hall was personally recognised by health secretary Matt Hancock in a letter to Daisy Cooper MP, and Bim Afolami MP received a similar letter thanking the hard work of Harpenden Health PCN.

As of last week, the team at the former Club Batchwood had administered 16,500 doses of COVID-19 vaccine.

As of February 22, 2,384 people across Herts have been registered to have died within 28 days of their first positive coronavirus test, with 297 of those hailing from St Albans district. According to the government's coronavirus dashboard, 121,304 people in the UK have died with the virus since records began in March, 

The UK’s R-number, which represents the rate of transmission, is between 0.6 and 0.9, meaning the rate of transmission is declining across the whole of the UK as the R-number sits below one. In the East of England, the R-number sits between 0.6 and 0.8 as of February 19.