180 further coronavirus cases and one more death recorded in Wirral

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 Wirral increased by 180 in the last 24 hours, official figures show – and one more death was recorded.

A total of 95,784 cases had been confirmed in Wirral when the UK coronavirus daily dashboard was updated on February 17 (Thursday), up from 95,604 on Wednesday.

The cumulativerate of infection in Wirral, which covers the whole pandemic, stands at 29,532 cases per 100,000 people, higher than the England average of 27,882.

Since January 31, the UK Health Security Agency has changed the way it reports coronavirus cases.

It means if one person tests positive for the virus more than 90 days after the first infection, two infection episodes will be recorded.

Across the UK, the number of recorded cases increased by 51,352 over the period, to 18,499,058.

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 now include LFT results for England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

There was also one more coronavirus death recorded in the latest 24-hour period in Wirral.

The dashboard shows 987 people had died in the area by February 17 (Thursday) – up from 986 on Wednesday.

It means there have been two deaths in the past week, which is a decrease on 11 the previous week.

They were among 22,640 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 Wirral.

Daily death counts are revised each day, with each case backdated to the actual date of death.

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

The latest figures show 234,161 people had received both jabs by February 16 (Wednesday) – 80% of those aged 12 and over, based on the number of people on the National Immunisation Management Service database.

Across England, 85% 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.