Knowsley is in the top five boroughs in England for the biggest week-on-week case rises of Covid-19, the latest figures show.
The figures, for the seven days to June 24, are based on the number of people who have tested positive for doronavirus in either a lab-reported or rapid lateral flow test, by specimen date.
The rate is expressed as the number of new cases per 100,000 people.
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And it reveals how Knowsley had a rate of 312.2 cases in the last recordable week, a total of 471, compared to 221, a rate of 146.5, in the seven days to June 17.
The borough has been placed with Tamworth, Warwick, Newcastle upon Tyne and North Tyneside as the areas with the most notable increases.
Hyndburn in Lancashire has the highest rate, with 444 new cases in the seven days to June 24, the equivalent of 547.9 cases per 100,000 people.
Blackburn with Darwen in Lancashire has the second highest rate, down up from 534.4 to 491.7, with 736 new cases.
Rossendale, also in Lancashire, has the third highest rate, up from 335.7 to 435.1, with 311 new cases.
Liverpool had a rate of 354.4 in the last recordable week, a total of 1,720, compared to a rate of 201.2, and 1,002 cases in the week to June 17.
Wirral had a rate of 214.5 in the last recordable week, a total of 659, compared to a rate of 133.3 and a total of 432 in the week to June 17.
Sefton had a rate of 261.2 in the last recordable week, a total of 722, compared to a rate of 178.0, a total of 492 in the week to June 17.
St. Helens had a rate of 211.0 in the last recordable week, a total of 381, ompcared to a rate of 122.4 and a total of 221 in the week to June 17.
Warrington had a rate of 248.1 in the last recordable week, a total of 521,c compared to a rate of 192.8 and 405 total cases in the week to June 17.
Today, it was reported how a total of 153,767 deaths have now occurred in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, the ONS said.
The highest number of deaths to occur on a single day was 1,481 on January 19.
During the first wave of the virus, the daily death toll peaked at 1,461 deaths on April 8 2020.
A total of 102 deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending June 18 mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) – up 21% on the previous week.
It is the first time the number of deaths has been above 100 since the week ending May 21.
All of the 102 deaths were registered in England.
Home Secretary Priti Patel said we will have to “adapt our lives accordingly” in order to get freedoms back while at the same time living with coronavirus.
“Look, I would love to take the mask off – but at the right time, I will do that,” she told Times Radio Breakfast.
“We are living with coronavirus and many of us have been saying this across Government, probably for the last 12 months actually, we are living with this virus, we’re in a pandemic.
“Yes, we have the vaccine, there’ll be boosters at some stage, booster jabs as well, so we are adapting our ay of life.
“I think to look to getting our freedoms back, which of course we all dearly want, we are adapting how we live and that means living with the concept of this pandemic, the virus, and obviously we adapt our lives accordingly.”
Schools minister Nick Gibb said it is still “very important” that those who come into contact with people with Covid self-isolate, whether in schools or society.
He said the government is trialing daily testing in schools to see if it would be an effective alternative to self-isolation.
He said: “Well, it is very important that, when a Covid case is identified and somebody has had Covid, that we identify anybody they have been in contact with and they are asked to self-isolate, whether that’s in schools or any other part of society, as we seek to tackle this appalling pandemic and minimise the spread of the virus.
“We are actually trialling daily contact testing, where somebody who has come into contact with somebody with Covid, instead of self-isolating, takes a test every day, and if they are negative they can go into school.
“We have trialled this in a small number of secondary schools and that trial finishes tomorrow.
“We will look at the data to see if that is an effective alternative to self-isolation.”
Professor Robert West said former health secretary Matt Hancock not following Covid rules is not on its own likely to make other people disobey them.
Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday if Mr Hancock’s actions will encourage people to ignore the regulations, Prof West, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (Spi-B), said: “I think that, in and of itself, that is already being priced in because people don’t really trust politicians.
“The risk is if that seeds a wider norm around other people.
“So I think it’s really up to everyone else, who people do trust – public health officials, the NHS, other public figures – not to go down that route and not to get drawn into that kind of double-speak, as it were.”
Professor Robert West said that the government had a big job to do getting people to understand the risks from coronavirus as society opens up further.
Prof West, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (Spi-B), told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that infection control needed to be embedded into people’s daily lives in the same way as road safety.
He added: “People are working on how we can embed better infection control into people’s lives and of course we do already have models for this, with road safety for example which is actually quite a strong parallel.
“You have a situation where you have to get on with your life, you have to do the things you want and need to do but what you do is you take steps to minimise the risk.”
When asked if people understand the risks Prof West said: “Not very well at the moment from the evidence that we have got, so that’s a big job to do.
“For example, many, many people still are not fully familiar with what they need to do if they have been infected and have symptoms.”
Steve Chalke, founder of Oasis Schools, said that 10% of the children and young people across the group’s schools – around 3,000 children – were out of school due to coronavirus.
