Number of postive tests puts town on par with inner-city London

» A TOWN in Gloucestershire has seen the numbers of people testing positive for coronavirus more than double in the week before Christmas - putting it on a par with many London boroughs.

The number of people who have tested positive for Covid-19 in two of Cirencester’s three areas is now into the Government’s ‘black zone’ – meaning that the average case rates are more than 1,600 infections per 100,000 people.

That puts Cirencester South and Cirencester East in the same category as inner-city Bristol, Manchester and London with some of the highest covid case rates in the country.

The figures show that in the seven days to December 23, that’s the Thursday before Christmas, the number of people catching Covid-19 in Cirencester South more than doubled to 125 people in just seven days – an increase of 135 per cent.

In Cirencester South, the case rate – the average number of cases per 100,000 people – was 1,670. It was a similar figure in Cirencester East, where the case rate was 1,637, and 138 people had tested positive for the virus in the seven days to last Thursday – a jump of 60 per cent on the week before.

There was a smaller rise in Cirencester Central - where 60 cases last week was an increase of 36 per cent.

The increases come as the daily figure for new infections was also the highest ever recorded in one day, with 129,471 new cases of coronavirus recorded across the UK in the last 24 hours – a new daily record.

The latest update means that more than 800,000 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in the last week.

A total of 9,546 people were in hospital in England with Covid-19 as of 8am on December 28, according to new figures from NHS England. This is up 38 per cent from a week earlier and is the highest number since March 3.

In Gloucestershire as a whole, the latest figures for Tuesday, December 28, were for increases in new cases, as Omicron sweeps across the county.

In total in Gloucestershire, another 723 people’s positive test results were recorded on the daily register by the UK Government.

Of those, 167 were in Cheltenham Borough, 106 in Tewkesbury Borough, 152 in Stroud District, 153 in Gloucester City, 63 in the Forest of Dean and 82 in Cotswold - all in just one day, December 28.

There was one more death from Covid recorded in Gloucestershire – the death of someone from the Stroud district, whose death was recorded over the Christmas period and registered on Tuesday.

The case rates across Gloucestershire continue to rise, too.

Cotswold District has seen the biggest rise in the week before Christmas, the number of new infections rose 40 per cent in just one week, up to 867 new infections in a week.