DEVON’S senior figures have said that they would be opposed to any further lockdown restrictions being imposed in the county – saying that it wouldn’t have an impact on the spread of coronavirus.

Infection rates within the county are well below the national average – 68.4 per 100,000 compared to 98.3 per 100,000 nationwide – with that figure skewed significantly by the outbreak at the University of Exeter.

Exeter’s rate of 299.8 per 100,000 is one of the highest in the country where no additional restrictions have been imposed, but the Team Devon Local Outbreak Engagement Board meeting on Thursday morning heard that this was primarily related to the University and had not spread into the wider community.

The Government is expected to announce its new three-tiered approach to lockdown restrictions next week – which would see tighter but yet undecided measures imposed on areas with a yet to be determined infection rate – but Devon’s senior officials said that additional measures would be unlikely to have a significant impact as long as the outbreak at the University is controlled, and that at present, the City is not inline for any local measures.

Dr Phil Norrey, Devon County Council’s chief executive, told the meeting that the three tiered measures would make things cleared and removed the confusions over current restrictions and the triggers for them being imposed, they had not been what they would be, nor did they know how areas like Exeter – with a high rate but confined mainly to one setting – would be treated.

He said: ‘There is an ongoing discussion about how Universities would be treated. We have a relative low incidence but an area with a higher incidence of Exeter due to the University.

‘Whether that would trigger categorisation into a high level of restrictions, we don’t know, so are waiting to see what that would bring, as well as other things to support compliance, such as the covid marshals, self-isolation payments, and additional resource for hard to reach groups.’

But he said: ‘As long as we feel we can manage things in the current context, we would want to avoid additional restrictions that may have an impact on communities and business, and that wouldn’t have an impact on controlling the spread of the disease or would be disproportionate given what we are already doing.

‘It will be critical to see the new arrangements and whether what we are doping locally to manage the outbreak around the University is sufficient to avoid further restrictions, particularly around Exeter.

‘Things move on rapidly and change by the day, but the South West is among the areas with the lowest incidence and in the South West we think we can manage COVID-19 best through local and regional measures rather than national intervention.

‘It is about providing the balance between the economic and social life of the communities, as well as the health protection responsibilities that we have got, but it is difficult and unprecedented decisions for the whole country so we will have to watch this space.’

Presenting the data to the board, Simon Chant, public health specialist, said that roughly a third of Devon’s MSOA areas currently had a cluster of three or more cases, but that almost all of those were between 3-5 cases, and that Devon did not have as many areas in the cluster range as the rest of the country.

Exeter currently has ten clusters, including Pennsylvania and University at 236, Central Exeter at 59 and 33 for St James’s Park & Hoopern, and Mr Chant said that the majority of those cases are linked to students from the University, as these are the areas where the predominant amount of student flats and housing is located, with the cases being linked to them.

Cllr John Hart, leader of Devon County Council, said that Exeter University was their biggest worry, but that ‘everything there is being kept under intense scrutiny and we’re holding daily incident management meetings.’

‘I’d also like to reiterate what’s been said about local lockdowns. As the situation currently stands, most of the cases in Exeter are in the student population and not in the wider community and so – at the moment – Exeter is not in line for a broad lockdown across the city.’

The latest ONS figures showed no new deaths in Devon for the most recent week of data, with Mr Chant saying that this was primarily because the age population of those testing positive was in younger people, while Dr Norrey added that just one care home in the Devon County Council area reporting an outbreak last week, and that while testing of care home staff is seeing some positives returned, this is not translating into outbreaks in care homes.

The meeting heard that three quarters of the cases in Devon are from Exeter, and that the majority of these were linked to the University, with Dr Virginia Pearson, director of public health, said that no urgent escalation measures were needed as it was under control.