There have been two local coronavirus outbreaks in England, the Government has revealed.
During Thursday's Downing Street briefing, Health Secretary Matt Hancock confirmed there have been Covid-19 outbreaks in "parts of Leicester" as well as in Kirklees in West Yorkshire.
But he said the manual tracing system had helped to identify the surge in cases, which enabled the Government and local authorities to take action.
He said: “There are these local outbreaks, we’ve seen them all the way through.
“And we now have the system in place to be able to spot them the best we can and then take that local action.
“It is natural that as the lockdown lifts slightly, we’ve always said that the next move is for more localised action in order to tackle outbreaks where we find them.”
Mr Hancock told the press conference that the local action committee was the formal process for deciding where measures were needed.
He said the local director of public health and the council were “heavily involved” in dealing with the outbreak in Kirklees.
Setting out how the system worked, he said: “We have a process so that if, on the ground, they need powers that I have, they can put that request up and we can look at that.
“Similarly, if we spot a problem we can go down to the council and ask what they are doing about it.
“That process is in place and it’s up and running and working.”
The revelation came as Mr Hancock defended the decision to abandon the development of the NHS track and trace app, which was supposed to be up and running by the start of June.
