In the weekly Greater Manchester Coronavirus response press conference Andy Burnham urged the Government to utilise the mass vaccination centre to its full potential.
The centre, which is located on the Etihad Campus, has had a utilisation rate of around 50% revealed the Mayor of Greater Manchester.
“What I would say to the government is it is an excellent facility with amazing staff and we believe there is a case to use it to its capacity. And there are two ways we think that can be done.
One option is to open the national booking system to people over 50. Because it seems to us that people who are younger with more mobility will likely to use the mass vaccination centre. Another way to address the issue would be to allow Greater Manchester use the spare capacity and call up people to be vaccinated.”
(Andy Burnham)
Two of Greater Manchester’s boroughs recorded an increase in the past seven days to the 15th February, Bury and Tameside.
Burnham spoke on the issue of the regions higher case rate through the majority of the outbreak. He believed that this was linked to the amount of people still going to their workplace as they were less likely to be able to work from home than people in other areas.
This led to the Mayor to ask the Health and Safety Executive to rethink their decision not to classify COVID-19 as a serious workplace risk.
Burnham was joined by Bev Hughes, Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, who revealed that in the last seven days Greater Manchester Police had dealt with 1,205 covid incidents and issued 228 fixed penalty notices. The vast majority of the demand was over the weekend.
After a dip in large gatherings an increase has been seen. 55 £800 fixed penalties were issued in the 7 day period. 32 of those at one very large party in Salford.
