South Kesteven has recorded its second fatality in just a few days.

Today's fatality increases the district's tally to 272, which on from a further fatality at the weekend.

Prior to those cases, the only other recent cases of people dying with Covid in South Kesteven were on May 5 and March 25.

This means the district has recorded 4 deaths in just over 4 months.

Today, South Kesteven recorded 41 cases of Covid-19 compared with 58 recorded yesterday, further increasing its 7-day infection rate, in contrast to national trends.

Today's 41 compares with 35 cases last Tuesday and 64 the Tuesday before.

The 7-day rate for South Kesteven is now 227.5 cases per 100,000, compared with 215.6 yesterday and 207.8 on Sunday.

Last Tuesday it stood at 271.7 after peaking at 353.9 the Friday before than and was at 300.5 cases per 100,000 the Monday before then.

This compares with the England average of 292.4, which has fallen from 296.6 yesterday, 447.6 last Tuesday and its recent high of 540 the Friday prior to that.

The figures come amid much testing, typically a million people a day and around 7 million a week, though in the past week or so testing has now dropped to 720,000 yesterday and 5.5 million over a week. Overall, there have been 9496 cases in South Kesteven since the start of the pandemic- equivalent to about one for about 15 residents in the district, which compares to the England average of one-in-11. Nationally, there were 21,691 cases recorded today, giving a total of 182,730 over the past week. This amounts to a drop of 47,098 or 20.5 per cent over the weekend before. However, the number of deaths was 138, a sharp increase on the 24 recorded yesterday. There have been 542 deaths over the past week, an increase of 62 or 12.9 per cent over the week before.