A YORK health chief has warned that more Covid cases can be expected in the city’s care homes despite residents and staff being vaccinated – but the illness will be much less serious and the virus won’t spread so much.

Sharon Stoltz was speaking after it emerged earlier this week that there had been five more Covid deaths in care homes in the York council area. It was also revealed yesterday that there is another case at a York home.

The director of public health said: “Everyone wants to get back to normal, but this data just illustrates why we need to do that in a slow and measured way.”

She said staff working in care homes were regularly tested for Covid-19 every week and residents every month, and many of the positive cases were picked up this way when staff or residents were not showing any symptoms.

She said all care homes had strict infection control measures in place and responded quickly to isolate anyone found to be testing positive with the virus.

She also said the vaccination programme was rolling out successfully across all care homes, but most staff and residents had only had one dose of the vaccine which - despite some ‘fantastic’ data showing it was safe, effective and reducing the number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths - wasn’t 100 per cent effective.

“So whilst the programme is rolling out and making a huge and positive impact, we still need to make sure that we are being as vigilant as we can with public health measures,” she said.

“We still expect to continue to see some positive tests among those vaccinated, however having the vaccine makes it more likely the virus won’t spread as much and the illness be much less serious than if you didn’t have the jab.

“Getting the vaccine when invited and continuing to do all we can to stop the virus from spreading will continue to make a massive difference.”

Meanwhile, data published by the council yesterday also showed only five schoolchildren had tested positive for Covid in a week, along with seven University of York students and one York St John student. It also revealed that 64,230 people had been vaccinated, up by 5,780.