New map shows the city areas most hit in fortnight

PUBLIC health bosses have revealed which parts of Leicester have recorded the most new coronavirus cases in recent weeks.

Leicester City Council has released its latest analysis, which shows where the 880 people who tested positive for Covid-19 over a two-week period live.

The council says 387 of those 880 cases, up to October 3, were concentrated in 10 neighbourhoods – largely to the north and east of the city – with the remaining cases spread across the rest of Leicester.

The city has this week been placed in the second tier of a new three tier system of local lockdowns, along with neighbouring Oadby and Wigston.

That means there has been a slight relaxation of the rules so people can meet in gardens – but it is forbidden to socially mix in any indoor setting with anyone who is not in your support bubble.

City council consultant in public health Rob Howard told the Mercury: “We have slowed it down and we have some semblance of control over it.

“It has not risen in the way it has in some parts of the North West and North East.

“We are doing that by looking constantly at the number and the maps and we can see where there are new infections and we send out our teams to knock on doors and talk to people and offer tests.

“We work with communities and use people from those communities to get those messages across.”

He added: “It’s not just the lockdown restrictions.

“We had a huge increase in testing and a massive communications campaign with a team of 500 people deployed from the council to knock on people’s doors, ask if they have symptoms, hand out tests.

“All that work led to the high increase we had at the peak (in June) going right down until the beginning of September when it started going up again.”

He said: “There has been a general increase across the whole city partly because lots of things were reopening and we relaxed a lot of the restrictions.

“Inevitably people got fed up and maybe got tired of not seeing their relatives again.”

■The top 10 areas of the city with the most infections according to the latest figures are: 1 Spinney Hill 64

2 Stoneygate 63

3 Latimer South 45 4 Clarendon Park 43 5 Northfields 39

6 Charnwood 38

7 Hamilton 33

8 Rushey Field 33

9 Evington 31

10 St Saviour’s 31