Stamford Hill’s Jewish community has ‘one of highest Covid infection rates in world’ John Dunne
The Orthodox Jewish community in Stamford Hill has been hit by one of the highest reported rates of Covid-19 “in the world to date”, according to research.
Across the UK the proportion of people who have tested positive for Covid-19 stands at seven per cent.
However among the 15,000 people in Stamford Hill’s Jewish community it is 75 per cent for working age adults, according to a report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Dr Michael Marks, who co-authored the research, said only a handful of studies have demonstrated similar rates. One of them was in Manaus, on the banks of the Amazon in Brazil.
Two-thirds of London s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community had Covid last year - nine times the national average and around 0.3 per cent of those infected died, a study has shown.
Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found the rate of past infection was at 64 per cent in the community of around 15,000 people.
This compares to rates of 11 per cent in London more generally and just seven per cent across the UK, according to estimates by the Office for National Statistics.
Suspected infections in the community peaked in early March, just before the first lockdown, when rates then began to fall sharply, before rising again in the autumn once restrictions were lifted.
BBC News
Published
image captionGuests fled when officers arrived at the Stamford Hill school, where the windows had been covered
Police broke up a wedding party in north London, where they now say about 150 people had gathered.
Officers found the windows at the Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School, in Stamford Hill, had been covered when they arrived at 21:15 GMT on Thursday.
Guests fled from the strictly Orthodox Charedi Jewish school when the police arrived. The organisers face a £10,000 fine for breaking lockdown rules.
The Met originally claimed that about 400 guests were at the gathering.
In a statement, the school said its hall had been leased out.
Covid-19: UK variant may be more deadly but nation s R number drops
Published
1. Some evidence the UK variant may be more deadly
We already knew that the Covid-19 variant first discovered in south-east England was more transmissible, but now - speaking at a Downing Street briefing - Prime Minister Boris Johnson has revealed it may also be associated with a higher degree of mortality . On how much more deadly the UK strain might be, the UK s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said if the old variant might lead to the deaths of 10 in 1,000 men in their 60s who caught the virus, the new variant might kill 13 or 14 in 1,000. However, he added: There s a lot of uncertainty around these numbers and we need more work to get a precise handle on it.