Preston has a day with no new recorded coronavirus cases

Looking towards Preston from Penwortham Pic: Tony Worrall

Preston has recorded no new coronavirus cases.

Latest figures for Wednesday (21 April) showed the city had zero Covid cases.

South Ribble recorded two new cases for the same day.

Ribble Valley was up by one case and Fylde also by one.

Wyre recorded two new cases and Chorley up by six.

Preston’s coronavirus infection rate dropped to 31.4 cases per 100,000 people for the seven days to April 17, down from 46.1 cases per 100,000 people for the seven days to April 10.

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Data for the most recent four days (April 18-21) has been excluded as it is incomplete and does not reflect the true number of cases.

South Ribble’s rate has plummeted to 19.9, down from 44.2 for the same two date periods as Preston.

Wyre was up slightly to 13.4 from 11.6 and Fylde dropped to 12.4, down from 21.

Ribble Valley dropped to 8.2, down from 23 and Chorley fell slightly to 33.8, from 33.8.

Elderly people receiving Covid jab not being struck down by Covid three weeks after

Fewer than two per cent of frail and elderly people admitted to hospital after a Covid-19 vaccine experience coronavirus symptoms three weeks after a single dose of the jab, data shows.

The findings were described as “very good news” by Professor Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), who worked on the academic paper.

Describing the findings of the vaccine study, which was published in March, Prof Semple told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that there was a sharp drop off in the number of vaccinated people experiencing Covid symptoms 21 days after a single dose of a vaccine.

This is the point at which experts believe maximum immunity from a single dose becomes apparent.

In the study, most vaccinated people who displayed symptoms of Covid and went to hospital had become infected before their immune system had a chance to respond to the jab.

The paper looked at more than 74,000 hospital admissions between September and early March, of which just under 2,000 people had received the vaccine.

See the latest coronavirus vaccine stats and information

Prof Semple said experts then looked at how many days there were between receiving the vaccine and the onset of their Covid symptoms.

“Now if the vaccine didn’t work, that number of days would stay relatively constant over time, but instead, what you see is most people who were admitted had caught their infection within a week of vaccination – either side of the vaccination – but then there was a really sharp drop off in numbers,” he said.

“Three weeks after being vaccinated, we could only count 32 people out of the 2,000 that had been vaccinated and that’s a tiny, tiny number – that’s less than 2%.

“And that’s just after the first vaccine, and that’s in your frail, elderly population.

“So this is really good real world data showing that this vaccine works and that one dose works really well.

“I think the message here is that when you come away from clinical trials, we can still show that the vaccine is working in the real world.”