With cases of Covid-19 rising steeply once more, our team is hard at work in Tower Hamlets sharing information about where local residents can get their coronavirus vaccination and what more they can do to keep themselves and others safe.
The Delta variant is seeing a sharp spike in cases amongst young people and BBC London took to the streets yesterday to film our team in action as we visited households in Tower Hamlets. The video was shared on BBC London's Evening News programme yesterday.
Covid in Tower Hamlets
In Tower Hamlets last week, there were 336 cases per 100,000 people, a 28% increase on the week before and well above the average in England of 287 cases.
With social distancing restrictions due to be reduced from next week, Tower Hamlets director of public health Dr Somen Banerjee highlights the importance of increasing the vaccine take-up in the area, saying:
"The highest number of cases we are seeing is in young adults. Cases in people aged 60 or over continue to be much lower than younger age groups. While admissions to hospital due to Covid-19 remain low, they are rising.
"Since last week 6,000 more residents have had their first vaccination and 5,000 more have had their second dose. In total 190,000 people in Tower Hamlets have now had at least their first dose and 97,000 are fully vaccinated with two doses.
"This means two thirds of Tower Hamlets have had at least one dose of the vaccination which is excellent. However, there are still more people we need to vaccinate."
See more in his weekly update here.
Our Covid-19 team has been working in Tower Hamlets for the past fortnight to encourage people to get vaccinated. We also are running Covid home testing programmes in other London boroughs and the West Midlands in partnerships with local authorities, in addition to fundraising campaigns for many of the nation's best loved charities.
For more information about our public health or charity fundraising campaigns, please get in touch with us here.
Update - 16/09/21: Please note that the BBC London video has now expired and is unfortunately no longer available for viewing.
Photo by Donovan Silva on Unsplash