239 further coronavirus cases in St Helens

A Coronavirus testing centre in Dalston, east London. There were a further 6,042 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK as of 9am on Saturday, taking the overall number to 429,277. A further 34 deaths were recorded.

The number of coronavirus cases in St Helens increased by 239 in the last 24 hours, official figures show.

A total of 51,127 people had been confirmed as testing positive for Covid-19 in St Helens when the UK coronavirus daily dashboard was updated on January 19 (Wednesday), up from 50,888 on Tuesday.

The rate of infection in St Helens now stands at 28,232 cases per 100,000 people, far higher than the England average of 23,272.

Across the UK, the number of recorded cases increased by 107,450 over the period, to 15,506,750.

People with a positive lateral flow test no longer need to take a follow-up PCR test to confirm the result unless they have coronavirus symptoms.

UK case numbers currently only include LFT results for England and Northern Ireland, with lateral flow testing data for Scotland due to be added in the coming weeks.

However, there were no new coronavirus deaths recorded in the latest 24-hour period in St Helens.

The dashboard shows 567 people had died in the area by January 19 (Wednesday) – which was unchanged from Tuesday.

It means there have been three deaths in the past week, which is a decrease on 14 the previous week.

They were among 21,547 deaths recorded across the North West.

The figures include anyone who died within 28 days of a positive test result for Covid-19, and whose usual residence was in St Helens.

Daily death counts are revised each day, with each case backdated to the actual date of death, so some areas might see their figures revised down.

The figures also show that four in five people in St Helens have received two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine.

The latest figures show 129,720 people had received both jabs by January 18 (Tuesday) – 79% of those aged 12 and over, based on the number of people on the National Immunisation Management Service database.

Across England, 83% of people aged 12 and above had received a second dose of the jab.

Unlike at local level, the national rate was calculated using mid-2020 population estimates from the Office for National Statistics.