Coronavirus: Younger people in low-income jobs behind rising Bolton hospital admissions

Staff who cannot socially distance or work from home account for ‘significant’ number of patints, says health official

People queue for Covid-19 vaccinations at the ESSA academy, in Bolton, where mass vaccinations are taking place to combat rising levels of the Indian variant (Getty)

Young people working low-paid jobs where they cannot socially distance are making up a “significant” number of the Covid-19 hospital admissions in Bolton, a vaccine programme leader has said.

Most of the people being admitted to hospital with coronavirus are patients in their 30s and 40s, according to Dr Helen Wall, senior responsible officer for Bolton’s Covid vaccine programme and a member of the city’s clinical commissioning group.

Many hospital admissions are people who have received a first dose of a vaccine, while just a “handful” of hospital admissions are from people who have received both of their vaccines, she added.

Bolton is among the areas hardest hit by the variant of Covid first detected in India, although experts fear the B.1.617.2 variant has now spread to areas across England.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Dr Wall said huge efforts were being made to curb the rise in Covid-19 rates in Bolton.

“The situation is that we have a high rate of Covid, higher than everyone else in the country,” she said. “These rates have been climbing for the past two to three weeks.

“We are working really hard on the ground to ensure that we get this under control. We’re doing this by means of extra testing, particularly in asymptomatic people in the communities and also a massive push of our vaccine programmes.

“We’re doing surge vaccinations and opening up extra sites across the town to enable anyone who is eligible to come forward to be vaccinated asap.”

Of the patients being admitted into hospital, “high numbers” are from young people who live near the town centre, she said.

“The areas where our rates are rapidly rising are because these young people are obviously working, going into low-paid jobs where they can’t socially distance and where they can’t work from home.

“The people who are going into the hospital are largely people who have only just become eligible for their vaccination, so we have significant numbers of 30 and 40-year-olds going in.

“They are people who only in the recent times have become eligible, some of them have only become eligible while they’ve been in hospital.

“So it’s important to us that we encourage everyone to come forward for their first dose – we literally have got tens of thousands of young people who have just become eligible for the vaccine that we need to get vaccinated really rapidly now.”

A number of hospitalisations are among those who have only had their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, while “literally a handful of people” are fully vaccinated with both doses, she added.

“In terms of how ill they are getting, I think the vaccine definitely seems to be working. We are certainly not seeing as many people as sick as we would have done pre-vaccine. The picture in the hospitals is much better than previous times.”

Dr Wall’s comments came as growing alarm over surging infections and hospital admissions prompted Boris Johnson to warn that further easing of restrictions “may need to wait”.

Health secretary Matt Hancock has also said it is “too early to say” whether the next stage of the roadmap out of lockdown will go ahead as planned on 21 June.

Infections and admissions have leapt by 20 per cent week on week, with the Indian variant now dominant and accounting for up to 75 per cent of the new cases, it was revealed.