North Yorkshire's director of public health reminds Scarborough parents children must self isolate if required as Covid cases rise

Louise Wallace North Yorkshire’s director of public health, said that staying at home when required was “absolutely key” as two schools in Scarborough remain closed due to outbreaks.

Graham School and Scarborough Sixth Form College, which have more than 2,000 students between them, will be shut until next week after a number of cases were detected using Lateral Flow Tests.

The Gallows Close Centre, a community group for young people in Scarborough , announced last week it was also closing for 10 days after it was made aware that children who should be isolating were mixing with those using its services.

Mrs Wallace told a briefing of the North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum today that: “Isolation is absolutely key.

“We all need to do the full 10-day isolation period for positive cases or contact and I would absolutely urge everybody to do that.

“It is a legal duty to do so, you are required to do so in order to manage the coronavirus across the whole of the country.

“So parents, please ensure that your children fully isolate and make sure that anybody who has a case or is a contact of coronavirus does isolate accordingly.

“Please do not spread the virus, please do all the right things and protect yourselves, your families and communities, you must self isolate for the full isolation period.”

Scarborough seven day infection rate per 100,00 people has jumped up to 138 with 150 new cases recorded in the last week alone. The borough had previously been averaging around 30 new cases per week.

Mrs Wallace said that people should remain on their guard against the virus, especially with the Delta variant spreading.

She said: “We have obviously got outbreaks in educational settings but we have got sustained community transmission as well and we have got household spread.

“I think the rising rates that we are seeing and the transmissibility of variants that we have now got across the county means that we are seeing multiple sources of infection.”