Grim milestone as city hits 8,000 Covid cases
INFECTIONS FOR FIFTH DAY IN ROW
THERE have now been more than 8,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in Leicester since the start of the pandemic.
The city added 97 new cases to its cumulative toll yesterday, pushing it past the grim milestone.
Across Leicester and Leicestershire, 263 cases have been added to local tallies in the last 24-hour recording period. Tolls updated yesterday afternoon, shortly after a new local lockdown system was announced, showed 166 of the cases were across the county.
However, the latest seven-day infection rates for Leicester and Leicestershire show the city and county are hovering around the national average.
For five days in a row, cases in the entirety of Leicestershire have risen by more than 200 – with 235 cases recorded in the city and county, 245 on Saturday, 286 on Friday and 274 on Thursday.
Broken down to district and county level, Charnwood again saw the most positive test results, adding 69 to its total.
Twenty-six new cases have been reported in Blaby, a further 19 in North West Leicestershire and rolling tolls in both Oadby and Wigston and Hinckley and Bosworth have gone up by 17 cases each.
Harborough added 14 new cases while in Melton there were four.
The seven-day infection rates, taken from the NHS Progression dashboard, were being used to determine what tier areas are placed in and what level of restrictions apply when Boris Johnson announced a new three-tier system.
According to the stats that relate to the seven days before October 9, Leicester has 482 current cases and a seven-day infection rate of 136.1 per 100,000 cases.
Leicestershire has 812 current cases and an infection rate of 115 cases per 100,000 people. It’s expected the new measures will be directly linked to local infection rates and the number of cases being confirmed area by area.
Nottingham continues to have the highest rate in England, with 2,763 new cases recorded in the seven days to October 8 – the equivalent of 830.0 cases per 100,000 people.
The Prime Minister chaired a meeting of the government’s Cobra committee to finalise what was being announced in Parliament last night.
Shortly before, Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe, revealed the city will be subject to tier 2 restrictions after being placed in the “high” alert category.