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Preston and South Ribble in England’s top 10 for fastest rising coronavirus infection rates

Posted on - 15th January, 2021 - 7:40pm | Author - | Posted in - Fylde News, Health, Politics, Preston News, Ribble Valley News, South Ribble News, Wyre News
A foggy January morning in Preston Pic: Paul Melling
A foggy January morning in Preston Pic: Paul Melling

Preston and South Ribble’s coronavirus infection rates are two of the fastest growing in England.

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Latest data from Public Health England shows the city and the borough in the country’s top 10 areas for week-on-week rises in the infection rate.

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Daily Covid-19 cases for Preston for Thursday (14 January) were 120 and for Friday (15 January) were 128.

For South Ribble they were 98 for Thursday and 74 for Friday.

Wyre saw 64 new cases and 86 new cases for the same two days.

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Fylde recorded 49 (Thu) cases and 32 cases (Fri).

Ribble Valley was up by 59 cases on both days.

Read more: Gym in Preston shut down after fifth breach of lockdown and tier restrictions

The latest infection rate data shows South Ribble with the fifth highest week-on-week rise, and Preston the seventh highest week-on-week rise in England. Seven of the fastest rising areas for Covid infections are in the North West of England.

Preston’s infection rate is now 477.9 cases per 100,000 people for the seven days to January 11, up from 400.3 cases per 100,000 people for the seven days to January 4.

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South Ribble’s infection rate is 522.6, up from 420.6 for the same seven day periods as Preston.

See the latest coronavirus cases and information near you

Data for the most recent four days (January 12-15) has been excluded as it is incomplete and does not reflect the true number of cases.

Wyre’s infection rate is now 438.9, up from 428.2.

Fylde is at 329.3, up from 310.7 and Ribble Valley is 540.3, down from 637.2.

Read more: These are all the Preston businesses fined or given notices for breaching Covid rules

Travel corridors shut by the government from Monday

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced all travel corridors would be scrapped from Monday to protect against any new strains of coronavirus.

Speaking during a press conference on Friday afternoon the Prime Minister said: “It’s precisely because we have the hope of that vaccine and the risk of new strains coming from overseas that we must take additional steps now to stop those strains from entering the country.

“Yesterday we announced that we’re banning flights from South America and Portugal, and to protect us against the risk from as-yet-unidentified strains we will also temporarily close all travel corridors from 0400 on Monday.”

See the full press conference below

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The new policy means arrivals from every destination will need to self-isolate for 10 days, or receive a negative result from a coronavirus test taken at least five days after they enter the UK.

Mr Johnson said that once 15 million of the most vulnerable people in the UK have been vaccinated by mid-February “we will think about what steps we could take to lift the restrictions”, but it will depend on what is happening with the virus.

Read more: All the Covid cycle lanes in Preston and South Ribble have now been scrapped

Chief medical officer professor Chris Whitty suggested the outlook for the UK ‘would be greatly improved by the spring’.

He said: “What no-one thinks is that suddenly in spring it is all over and that is the whole thing done,” he said.

“What we expect is things to be substantially better than they are at the moment.

“The hope is that is a kind of reasonable timeframe to be thinking about. But if we try to put a hard stop on this we will be caught out by events.

“But I think that broad time-frame still feels to me a reasonable one, provided what we are not expecting is completely back to two springs ago.”

Read more: See the latest Preston news and headlines

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