Coronavirus: Why does Cumbrian town of Barrow-in-Furness have highest rate of infection in UK?

Tightly packed terrace housing, high rates of underlying health conditions and an economy reliant on a single submarine-building site where almost 10,000 people work may all have added to super-spreading

It is one of England’s remotest towns – surrounded to the south, east and west by sea and to the north by the wilds of the Lake District.

But it would seem such isolation has not protected Barrow-in-Furness from coronavirus.

The industrial Cumbrian seaport has this week been revealed to have the highest infection rates anywhere in England and Wales.

Government figures show some 553 people here have been diagnosed with Covid-19 – a rate of 823.7 cases per 100,000 people.

For context that makes it more that triple the English average of 244.

The Covid-related death rate here – 91 for every 100,000 population – is also uncomfortably high compared with the rest of England and Wales which stands at 36.2.

All of which has led to one obvious question: why would such a remote spot – home to just 67,000 people and an hour’s drive to the nearest motorway – become a coronavirus hotspot?

“The rate of testing in Barrow has been two to three times higher than in many other parts of the north-west, so that will explain a fair chunk of [the high number],” Colin Cox, the director of public health for Cumbria, has said. “But I don’t think it will explain all of it.”

So, what will?

A single party is thought to have sown much of the infection in the town. At least six people who attended the gathering – held perfectly legally before lockdown – are known to have later been diagnosed with the virus. One of them died.

But the virus’s race around the community may then have been helped by a number of environmental factors: tightly packed and often crowded terrace housing, high numbers of pre-existing health conditions connected to the area’s industrial past, and an economy reliant on a BAE Systems shipyard and plant where nuclear submarines are built and which employ almost 10,000 workers.

“Let me tell you something,” Kevin Hamilton, mayor of Barrow Borough Council, tells The Independent. “You can’t build nuclear submarines while working from home. Not unless you have a very big bath. There are 9,500 people who work there and we know that one or two of them had the virus in early March, so that’s potentially a lot of people being exposed right there.”

Indeed, even after lockdown, some 1,500 people remained working on site building the new Astute-class submarines.

Councillor Hamilton adds that he himself lived in the town centre, one of the country’s most deprived council wards. “About 50 per cent of Barrow’s housing is terraced,” he says. “You can’t social distance in those kinds of streets…[so] that immediately means a greater likelihood of spread before restrictions were imposed.”

The population is also older than average here – 22.7 per cent of people are aged 65-90 compared to a national average of 18.3 – although, while that might explain an especially high death rate, there is nothing to suggest older people are more likely to spread the virus.

Yet despite the theories, it would appear central government appears largely uninterested in trying to find out more.

Although Mr Cox revealed on Friday that health secretary Matt Hancock had agreed to look at the issue, the council has, by all accounts, heard no more since.

“You would expect some kind of communication as soon as there figures were known, if only because the government wanted to understand the disease more,” says Coun Hamilton. “As far as I’m aware, there’s been nothing.”

The Department of Health and Social Care has been contacted for comment.