YORK'S Covid-19 vaccination programme is "definitely helping" to reduce hospital admissions and the severity of illness - but health bosses warn younger people and those who have already been vaccinated are still at risk of infection.

Hospital admissions are decreasing, deaths from Covid-19 in York are falling and the severity of the virus is lower for some patients - a Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) meeting heard yesterday.

But residents are still falling ill - particularly people aged 20 to 40 - and outbreaks have still been seen in care homes where people are vaccinated.

"We are not there yet," warned Dr Nigel Wells, chair of the CCG. "We need to stay safe and follow the rules and if we do that, we will all get through it together."

Michelle Carrington, director of nursing at the CCG, said: "We are not vaccinated until we are all vaccinated."

She added: “We can see the affect on hospital admissions and the severity of illness with vaccination. It's getting us nearer to where we need to be.

"The hospital is starting to swap their Covid wards back to non-Covid wards.

"But we are not out of the woods yet."

Residents have begun to receive their second doses of the vaccine in York and the CCG is also working to vaccinate members of the traveller community, homeless people and groups from different ethnic backgrounds.

York's Covid rate has fallen again after a slight rise. Yesterday the rate was 66 per 100,000 and the public health team said unconfirmed data suggests it is now even lower.

Sharon Stoltz, York's director of public health, said: "We can have confidence that our infection rates are falling.

"The age groups that are driving infections are in the 20s, 30s and 40s. They are not groups in the current vaccination cohort.

"Vaccination is definitely helping. With the older age groups it's helping in terms of hospital admissions, we can start to see those falling.

"But we must continue to get the message out about infection control. Even for people who have been vaccinated, those measures are really important.

"We need to balance message of hope with the fact that we are still living with a pandemic."

"There is lots to celebrate but we need to continue to push those important behavioural health messages."