Scarborough borough 'could become a Covid-19 hotspot by end of September'

Academics are predicting Scarborough could become a coronavirus hotspot by the end of the month.
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A team from Imperial College London has designed a website which, using data for daily reported cases and weekly reported deaths, and mathematical modelling, reports the chances that a local authority area will become a danger zone for the disease.

By September 27, the site has the Scarborough borough at a 74 per cent chance it will become a hotspot in the following week.

That figure rises to an 82 per cent chance by October 4.

Scarborough town centreScarborough town centre
Scarborough town centre
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The website defines a hotspot as a local authority where it forecasts there to be more than 50 cases of coronavirus per 100,000 of the population per week.

The website was produced by the Department of Mathematics in collaboration with the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modelling within the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis (GIDA), and Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (J-IDEA) at Imperial College London.

Lead researcher Professor Axel Gandy, from the Department of Mathematics, said: “The model allows us to project where local hotspots of Covid-19 are likely to develop in England and Wales based on the trends that we’re seeing in those areas.

"Covid-19 is, unfortunately, very much still with us, but we hope this will be a useful tool for local and national governments trying to bring hotspots under control.”

Scarborough was declared an Area of Concern on Friday.

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The figures in this story were updated from the original at 9.30am on September 23.

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