Image: Royal Voluntary Service. Image detail: Iona Lidington via Kingston Council. The number of new cases of Covid-19 is rising in Kingston again after weeks of decline in the borough and across South London. On Tuesday (March 16) the Surrey Comet caught up with Director of Public Health on Kingston Council, Iona Lidington, to see what was behind the latest data on cases and how authorities in the borough are responding.
Why are the numbers of new cases in Kingston rising? There are a couple of reasons why we ve seen the rate, which is quite variable at the moment, bump up a little bit. Generally we re quite pleased at how rates have gone down but clearly we want them to keep going down. It s a concern to see infections go up in any of the age groups. We ve particularly seen it in our teenagers and over 70s. Our teenagers we can perhaps understand because we ve been doing much more testing. All secondary school pupils have been tested three times in school before testing a
Kingston Council’s Director for Public Health has sent out letters to all of the borough’s secondary schools inviting parents and their children to access asymptomatic coronavirus tests. Director for Public Health Iona Lidington wrote to schools on December 17 informing them about asymptomatic testing in the borough, expected to be available in December. A spokesperson for the council said: “Families were invited to book the asymptomatic testing through the national website for testing at national test sites.” They added: “Some schools were also offered the opportunity to access an additional testing location at Kingston University in the week commencing December 20.”