Message from Solihull’s Director of Public Health, Ruth Tennant

Our COVID infection figures are at last starting to see a significant reduction, down approximately 29%, thanks to your efforts in following the lockdown rules.  We are now down to 353 infections per 100,000 with new cases falling to 778 each week in Solihull, and 16 of the borough’s 17 wards seeing a decrease.

This is great news, but it means it is even more important that we continue to stick to the current restrictions to keep driving our numbers down.  353 infections per 100,000 people seems better than the over 550 we were experiencing only a few weeks ago, but in early December it was only 153 and in August it was 12.

The decrease is welcome, but it is at a much slower rate than last year. We know our hospitals are still full of severely ill COVID patients and while the numbers are stable, there is still huge pressure on our local NHS colleagues.

The data for Knowle is somewhat better, but we still need to take all the precautions to drive the figures right down.