THE number of patients receiving care at Warrington Hospital after contracting coronavirus remains stable.

This is according to the latest Covid-19 update issued by Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust this afternoon, Tuesday.

At present, 21 patients are being cared for at the Lovely Lane site after testing positive for the virus in the past 14 days or less.

Of this number, four are receiving care in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

This is a fall of two patients in general since yesterday, although the number of patients in ICU remains the same.

Moreover, four more patients have been discharged from the hospital after recovering from Covid-19.

This takes the discharge total since the start of the pandemic to 2,118.

No new coronavirus deaths have been recorded in the past 24 hours, meaning the trust’s virus death toll to date stands at 510.

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Across Warrington as a whole, the number of new coronavirus cases recorded dropped by around 30 per cent in a week.

According to the latest data from Public Health England, 703 positive Covid-19 tests were returned in the borough in the seven days before July 29 – the most recent period for which figures are available.

This equates to 334.7 infections for every 100,000 residents, which is the 55th highest rate in the country.

By comparison, in the week leading up to July 22 there were 1,088 new cases in the town – an infection rate of 518.1.

Warrington was one of 306 local authority areas in England to record a drop in case numbers between these two dates, while nine saw a rise.