A FURTHER death has been confirmed at Warrington Hospital over the weekend of a patient that had tested positive for coronavirus.

The sad news was announced this afternoon, Monday, by Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in its daily Covid-19 update.

It means that as a result, the trust’s virus death toll to date has now risen to 539.

At present, 34 beds at the Lovely Lane site are occupied by patients that have tested positive for coronavirus in the past 14 days or less.

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

This is a rise of one patient since Friday, although the number in ICU remains the same.

Nine more patients were discharged from the hospital over the weekend after recovering from Covid.

This takes the trust’s virus discharge total since the start of the pandemic to 2,386.

Across Warrington as a whole, the number of new coronavirus cases being recorded over a seven-day period is continuing to rise, latest data shows.

During the week up to October 10, which is the most recent period for which figures are available, 1,192 infections were recorded in the town through lab and rapid lateral flow testing.

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This is the equivalent of 569.3 cases among every 100,000 residents, which is the 60th highest rate in England compared with all other local authority areas.

Moreover, this is a rise compared with the previous week up to October 4, when 898 cases were detected at an infection rate of 428.9.

Warrington is among 325 of 377 local areas in England that have seen a rise in case rates (86 per cent), while 51 have seen a fall (18 per cent) and one is unchanged.

The figures are now as high as early summer and approaching those of early this year.