ANOTHER Winchester district person is reported to have died of Covid-19.

They are the fourth person to die since the start of last week.

The high rate of increase in new Covid cases in Winchester district has dropped today with only 15 new cases compared to 26 and 25 on Wednesday and yesterday.

The figure for the Winchester district is 863 up from 848, since the start of the pandemic in March.

In the Winchester district the number of new cases in the last seven days has been 124, with 85 in the seven days previously.

The number of Covid-19 patients in the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester has risen in recent weeks. The most recent available figure is 33 yesterday with three at North Hampshire Hospital in Basingstoke.

In the Hampshire County Council area, that includes Winchester, the tally has risen from 8,474 to 8,641, a daily rise of 167, lower than recent days.

‘Winchester district’ comprises more than just 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.

Some good news. The R number, the reproduction number, in the south-east has dropped slightly to between 1.2 and 1.5 meaning that on average every 10 people infected will infect between 12 and 15 other people. The growth rate in the south east region is now between +4% and +7%, meaning the number of new infections is growing by up to 7% every day.

Data shows that the infection rate in the city council district is 691.2 people in every 100,000 since the start of the crisis in March. See graph below:

Hampshire Chronicle:

The rate for new cases in the district for the last seven days to Tuesday October 20, the latest available, is 67.3 people per 100,000 (84 cases). On the week to October 13 the figure was 74.5 (93), so a slight decline week on week.

Nationally, 224 people have died in the UK, bringing the number of confirmed reported deaths to 44,571.

There have been no new reports today of cases in schools. Four have reported cases this week: Newtown Soberton Infants in the Meon Valley, Osborne School in Winchester, Denmead and John Keble in Hursley. The latest figure for infections at the university is 15.

There have been 830,998 cases of the virus across the UK. This is an increase of 20,530 in the last 24 hours.

The number of deaths in Hampshire hospitals is now 625. 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, 239; Solent, 2; Southern Health, 17; University Hospital Southampton, 202.

Regarding Covid patients admitted to hospital, the latest figure is 65 reported on Wednesday, up 14 on Monday, in the south-east region, which includes Hampshire. There are today 391 with the condition in hospital, up 44 on yesterday, with 17 on ventilators, down two, according to the ONS. The numbers are not broken down for the 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, 738, up four, (53.4 per 100,000 people), Portsmouth, 79 (36.8) and Southampton, 125 (49.1). The Winchester district figure, the city council area, is 81, a rate of 64.9, higher than the other three areas mentioned. But all the Hampshire figures are below the national average.