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A new mural celebrating the NHS, painted in north Manchester on Friday
Is Andy Burnham's resistance to tier three a principled stand or just an attempt to extract more money from central government? While Burnham is insisting that he 'won't be rolled over' for money — he is believed to have been offered between £75 million to £100 million if he agrees to the higher level of restrictions — communities secretary Robert Jenrick is insisting that the government is close to making a deal with Andy Burnham's local authority.
Meanwhile, what no one seems to have noticed — or at least are not letting on — is that cases in Manchester are now falling and are showing signs of levelling off in the other nine boroughs that make up Greater Manchester. In the city of Manchester itself — which has been the seat of the local epidemic, and which accounts for 20 per cent of the population of Greater Manchester — the seven day rolling average of new cases peaked on 3 October at 460. A week later it was 382 and by the Saturday just gone, it was 243.
While infections in other boroughs have yet to show a sustained fall, they have either levelled off or have substantially slowed.
Nor, it seems, do reports of overflowing hospitals stack up. On Sunday, the
Observer reported on a leaked NHS document showing that 211 out of 257 critical care beds in Greater Manchester were occupied on Friday — 82 per cent of the total.
It echoed
reports from a Liverpool councillor last week who claimed that 95 per cent of intensive care beds in the city were occupied — a claim that didn't stand up to closer examination. If 80 per cent of Greater Manchester critical care beds are currently occupied,
this would in fact be less than last October, when Manchester University Hospitals Trust recorded that 87 per cent of its beds (94 out of 108) were occupied.
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