Lakeside Healthcare boss hits out at unreliable Covid-19 data

A North Northamptonshire healthcare boss has hit out at unreliable data and said residents and health officials are being lied to about the number of positive cases in the county.

Yesterday Lucy Wightman, Northamptonshire’s Director of Public Health, told residents not to panic ahead of the Government publishing testing data that revealed the number of Covid-19 cases in the county was actually double what has been reported for months and is actually 3,105 rather than the previous figure of 1,695. Northampton has had the most cases overall and Kettering has had the highest cases per population.

The jump was after the Government decided to publish testing data from mobile testing units that have been deployed across the county since May and outside of hospitals.

Now on Twitter Professor Robert Harris, chief executive of Lakeside Healthcare, which runs GP surgeries across Corby, Kettering, East Northants and Oundle, has accused the Government of not revealing the full extent of the coronavirus infection levels across the country and has warned infections will rise unless local populations have a full picture of how where they live is being affected by the contagion.

He tweeted last night after news of the Northants case number almost doubling broke: “This is why my organisation @Lakeside_HC has remained on full alert; why we have not relaxed our triage & treat process for 3 months; and why the safety of our patients and staff in Northants is paramount.

“Why is the data so massively unreliable?”

A second tweet said: “Are we being lied to because of incompetency or because of political expediency? Neither is acceptable.

“On Saturday people will think it’s OK to resume normal service: in pubs; in parks; at parties.

“Know this: positive cases will rise; the death rate will rise.”

There has been confusion over the testing data for many weeks. The Leicester lockdown this week was prompted by a spike in cases, detected largely from the mobile testing units stationed in the city.

However the data had not been shared with Leicester health officials until late in the day and the Government has faced widespread criticism for holding back the information from local councils.

In yesterday’s statement Lucy Wightman, who has refused interview requests from the Local Democracy Reporting Service since the pandemic began, did not reveal any figures or give an indication of where in the county the infection may have been the potent.

She has not so far written a public report on the pandemic and a covid update from her to the Northamptonshire Health and Wellbeing board next Thursday (July 8) will be a verbal update only and not accompanied by any papers.

Liberal Democrat county councillor Chris Stanbra said councillors have not been kept up to date with the finer details of the local response, therefore they have been unable to disseminate information to residents.

He is part of the newly created oversight and engagement board which has been set up to ratify the Northamptonshire Covid-19 Outbreak Prevention and Control Plan and agree the next steps.