The 7-day Covid-19 infection rate in South Kesteven has increased to three times what it was early last week.

Seven cases were recorded yesterday giving a total of 45 over the past week, compared 17 cases in the week to last Thursday and 12 in the week to last Tuesday.

This compares with 9 cases last Thursday and two cases the Thursday before that.

Yesterday's 7-day case rate is now 31.6 cases per 100,000 compared with the low of 8.4 cases per 100 last Tuesday and 11.9 cases per 100,000 people last Thursday.

South Kesteven now has a recorded 7735 cases since the start of the pandemic- about one for each 20 residents, which compares with the England average of one for each 15 residents.

The number of reported deaths remains at 270, following an 'increase' by 3 yesterday due to changes in how the figures were calculated, rather than any actual deaths.

Rutland similarly increased its deaths tally by three after not recording a single death since late April, again suggesting statistical revisions are the cause.

Nationally, there were 19 deaths recorded, giving a grand total of 127,945 since the start of the pandemic. This amounts to 78 over the week, an increase of 23 fatalities or 41.8 per cent over the week before.

The number of recorded cases yesterday increased by 11,007 to 4,600,623. This amounts to 58,830 over the past week, an increase of 14,822 (33.7%) over the week before.

Across the UK, this amounts to a 7-day rate of 75 per 100,000 people.

The figures come amid a large increase in testing, which amounted to 1.1 million new tests conducted on Wednesday, the latest figures available on the government's UK Covid 19 tracker.