TWO more patients have sadly died at Warrington Hospital in the past 24 hours after contracting coronavirus.

The news was confirmed this afternoon, Friday, by Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in its daily Covid-19 briefing.

As a result, it means that the trust’s virus death toll has risen to 538.

At present, 33 beds at the Lovely Lane site are occupied by patients that have tested positive for Covid-19 in the past 14 days or less.

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

Four more patients have been discharged from the site after recovering from Covid.

This takes the trust’s virus discharge total since the start of the pandemic to 2,377.

Across Warrington as a whole, the number of new coronavirus cases being recorded over a seven-day period continues to rise.

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During the week up to October 10, which is the most recent period for which figures are available, 1,147 infections were recorded in the town through lab and rapid lateral flow testing.

This is the equivalent of 547.8 cases per every 100,000 residents, which is the 60th highest rate in the UK compared with all other local authority areas.

Moreover, this is a rise of 309 cases compared with the previous week up to October 3, when 838 cases were detected at an infection rate of 400.2.

Warrington is among 309 of 377 local areas in England that have seen a rise in case rates (82 per cent), while 66 have seen a fall (18 per cent) and two are unchanged.