THE sharp spike in new coronavirus cases Winchester district this month has started to ease.
There have been 10 cases reported today, according to data published by the Government website this afternoon.
Two deaths have been reported in Winchester district this week, the first for nearly a month.
Covid cases in the Winchester district are now at 731, up from 721. In the last 24 hours for the county council area the tally has risen by 142 to 7,427, from 7,285.
There have been 86 new cases reported in the Winchester district in the last seven days, down 11 from yesterday's rolling seven-day total of 97. The figure for the previous seven days is 84 up from 68, showing that the steep rise of the last two weeks has eased as the weekly numbers 86 and 84 now nearly merge.
'Winchester district' comprises more than the city and is the city council area which stretches from Micheldever in the north to Southwick in the south, from Sparsholt in the west to Bramdean in the east.
Data shoes that the infection rate in the city council district is 585.5 people in every 100,000 since the start of the crisis in March. See the graph below:
The rate for new cases in the district for the last seven days to Monday, is 60.7 people per 100,000. On the week to October 4 the figure was 47.5.
Nationally, 138 people have died in the UK today – up one from yesterday. This brings the number of confirmed reported deaths to 43,293.
There have been 673,622 cases of the virus across the UK. This is an increase of 18,980 in the last 24 hours.
The number of deaths in Hampshire hospitals is 620, including the death from Hampshire Hospitals Trust reported by the NHS on Wednesday. The figure for fatalities at the Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which includes the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester, is now 164. For the other local county trusts, Portsmouth Hospital, 237; Solent, 2; Southern Health, 17; University Southampton, 200.
But the R number in the south-east is steady at between 1.2 and 1.4 meaning that on average every 10 people infected will infect between 12 and 14 other people.
The growth rate in the south east region is now between +2% and +7%, meaning the number of new infections is growing by up to 7% every day, an increase of one per cent.
Regarding Covid patients admitted to hospital, the latest figure is 48 reported on Tuesday, up 11 from Monday, in the south-east region, which includes Hampshire. There are today 228 with the condition in hospital, up seven on Wednesday, with 12 on ventilators today, up two, according to the ONS. The numbers are not broken down for hospitals in Hampshire.
Total number of deaths since the start of the pandemic of people who had had a positive test result for Covid-19 and died within 28 days of the first positive test, remains: Hampshire, 730 (52.8 per 100,000 people), Portsmouth, 79 (36.8) and Southampton, 123 (48.7). The Winchester district figure, the city council area, is 79, up two from Monday, a rate of 63.3, higher than the other three areas mentioned.
Other coronavirus news:
CORONAVIRUS outbreaks have been recorded in care homes across Hampshire but further details have not been revealed.
County bosses said they are "carefully" monitoring care homes across the county as they are seeing "sporadic outbreaks".
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