PARTS of the Helensburgh and Lomond area are among the safest in Scotland in terms of the risk of exposure to Covid-19 , according to a new study.
Research by Scottish think tank Scotianomics has placed 10 of the authority’s 11 wards in the bottom half of a ‘league table’ ranking all of the country’s 354 council wards in terms of their risk of community coronavirus infection.
The least at risk in the whole of the Argyll and Bute area was the Lomond North council ward, which includes the villages of Rhu, Shandon, Garelochhead, Luss and Arrochar, as well as the whole of the Rosneath peninsula.
Lomond North was ranked in 334th place in the Scotianomics study, which used a scoring system combining local economic and social connectivity with community health data.
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All of the 11 council wards in Argyll and Bute, bar one, were placed in the bottom half of the league table, with the most at-risk part of the area – and the only one in the top half – being the Cowal ward, which was ranked in 172nd place.
Helensburgh Central, in 205th place, is next on the list, while Helensburgh and Lomond South is in 315th place.
Four wards in West Dunbartonshire featured in the top 10 most at-risk areas – including the Leven and Dumbarton wards, which share borders with the Helensburgh and Lomond area.
The compilers of the study say it is intended to be used cautiously and is not a map of Covid-19 cases. It also says the figures do not imply that some areas have more cases than others.
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Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp, founding director of Scotianomics in Glasgow, said: “The public and business reaction to coronavirus is highly-charged and often emotional.
“We believe this geographic breakdown can help the national response to provide clear analysis of existing data.
“What is evident is that, for a wide variety of reasons, the risks vary hugely in different communities across Scotland.”
The research was conducted during April and has already been submitted to the Scottish Government’s Advisory Group on Economic Recovery and has been welcomed by government ministers.
Mr MacIntyre-Kemp added: “We want to be absolutely clear: this is nothing to do with the number of cases in an area or how well people living in each area have observed the lockdown.
“It is not a map of Covid-19 cases across Scotland but of the areas most at risk of community infection.
“However, what it sets out very clearly is that the risks of transmission and the likelihood of fatalities within particular communities can be predicted with a high degree of confidence.
“It is our hope that this kind of fact-based, data-driven research will help shape the Scottish Government’s plans to get the best possible outcomes for both public health and the economy, by lifting lockdown according to the very different risks in different areas.”
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