More than 400 care homes in England have reported outbreaks of coronavirus in the past seven days, Public Health England has said.
Its latest data on the spread of the virus within the care sector show a total of more than 5,500 homes, or 35 per cent, in England have been affected by Covid-19.
The worst affected region is the north east of England where 48 per cent of care homes have reported a Covid-19 outbreak.
London and the north west regions have seen 41 per cent of all care homes reporting Covid-19 outbreaks.
The least affected region is the south west which has reported just over 25 per cent of care homes there suffering an outbreak.
Among local councils, all care homes in the London boroughs of Camden and Hammersmith and Fulham have reported an outbreak. In Kensington and Chelsea and Tower Hamlets, 80 per cent of homes have been infected.
Public Health England said the number of homes reporting confirmed or suspected cases of coronavirus was now falling week to week from a peak of 1,000 at the start of April.
The number of deaths in care homes each week are also starting to fall but there were still more than 2,200 deaths in the most recent data reported by the Office for National Statistics.
The government has also come under pressure after the ONS reported there were also 10,000 more deaths in care homes that were not linked to Covid-19 than would normally be expected over the past five years.
The National Care Association has criticised the lack of action and said staff in social care “felt abandoned.”
On Wednesday, the government announced £600m of extra funding to boost infection control in care homes.
But the money will not be provided for homecare services and social care leaders have criticised the government’s delayed response to the crisis.
At the daily Downing Street briefing, Mr Shapps said care homes were "specialists in infection control" and that in the "vast majority" of care homes there have been no reports of coronavirus.
He said: "In the vast majority of care homes, Covid-19 hasn't been reported at all. However, it certainly is the case when we've seen these figures from the World Health Organisation which say that in Europe as a whole over 50 per cent of deaths have taken place in care homes - not so in English care homes, the figure has been around 25 per cent overall."
