Steep rise in number of patients at Winchester hospital: today's news and numbers for Tuesday October 20

This morning there were 34 patients compared to 20 last week.

But there were no Covid-related deaths in Winchester district and only one across Hampshire reported in last 24 hours, according to figures released this afternoon.

Winchester district had seen three deaths since last Tuesday bringing the number of people to die in the pandemic to 80.

But the numbers of infected people in the Winchester district continues to rise steadily with double figure increases most days this month.

There have been 16 new cases in the Winchester district in the last 24 hours, according to data published by the Government website.

That takes the Winchester district figure to 797 up from 781. In the last 24 hours for the Hampshire County Council area, that includes Winchester, the tally has risen by 183 to 8,063.

Some 96 new cases have been reported in the Winchester district in the last seven days, three up on yesterday's rolling seven-day total. The figure for the previous seven days is 90, up five.

'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 638.3 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 October 19, the latest available, is 68.9 people per 100,000 (86 cases). On the week to October 5 the figure was 67.3 (84).

Nationally, 241 people have died in the UK today, the highest numbers for several months. This brings the number of confirmed reported deaths to 43,967.

There have been 762,542 cases of the virus across the UK. This is an increase of 21,331 in the last 24 hours.

The number of deaths in Hampshire hospitals is now 622. The figure for fatalities at the Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which includes the RHCH in Winchester, is 165. For the other local county trusts: Portsmouth Hospital, 237; Solent, 2; Southern Health, 17; University Hospital Southampton, 201.

The R number in the south-east has risen to between 1.3 and 1.5 meaning that on average every 10 people infected will infect between 13 and 15 other people.

The growth rate in the south east region is now between +5% and +8%, meaning the number of new infections is growing by up to 8% every day.

Regarding Covid patients admitted to hospital, the latest figure is 34 reported on Saturday, up one on Friday, in the south-east region, which includes Hampshire. There are today 322 with the condition in hospital, up 101 on yesterday, with 18 on ventilators today, up seven, 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, 733 (53.0 per 100,000 people), Portsmouth, 79 (36.8) and Southampton, 124 (49.1). The Winchester district figure, the city council area, is 80, a rate of 64.1, higher than the other three areas mentioned. But all the Hampshire figures are below the national average.

Other coronavirus news:

A MAP of coronavirus cases across the UK has revealed which areas of Winchester and its surroundings currently have some of the highest rates of infection.

The government map breaks down coronavirus rates into smaller geographic areas, including nations and counties. At a lower level, it breaks them into Middle Layer Super Output Areas, or MSOAs, which are smaller, postcode-linked areas that are used for a range of government statistics.

Read more here

Another case at a school in the Winchester district.

Read more here