Coronavirus UK: 38 areas added to ‘watch list’, including all of London

A list of 38 new areas has been added to the coronavirus ‘watch list’ this week, as the number of cases continues to rise in England.

That now means there are a total of 92 locations on the list, including all 33 boroughs of London.

Four areas have been escalated to the ‘intervention areas’ list, so the locations that have been blocked are Leeds, Stockport, Wigan and Blackpool.

There are 48 areas locked up locally and it is estimated that around 17 million Britons now live under some form of restrictions.

Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland and Stockton-on-Tees, all in Teesside, have escalated to ‘higher support areas’ meaning they could be the next places where a local lockdown is set.

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Each London borough is now an ‘area of ​​concern’, including: Barking and Dagenham, Barnet, Bexley, Brent, Bromley, Camden, City of London, Croydon, Ealing, Enfield, Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey, Harrow, Havering, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Kingston upon Thames, Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton, Newham, Redbridge, Richmond upon Thames, Southwark, Sutton, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Wandsworth and Westminster.

Hertsmere, Scarborough, Selby, Sheffield and Spelthorne remain on the list of “areas of concern” and haven’t moved since last week.

The four areas completely removed from the watch list are Corby, Northampton, Peterborough and Stoke-on-Trent.

Several cities across the UK went into local lockdown starting at midnight, including Leeds, Wigan, Stockport, Blackpool and Llanelli in Carmarthenshire.

The two largest cities in Wales, Cardiff and Swansea, will do the same from midnight tonight.

Scientists have warned that the UK’s R-rate, which measures how fast Covid-19 is spreading, has risen again since last week.

Data released yesterday by the Government Office for Science and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) show that the estimate of R for the entire UK is between 1.2 and 1.5.

It comes after another 6,874 coronavirus cases were recorded in the UK in the past 24 hours, another record high in a single day.

The numbers rose slightly on Thursday, when there were 6,634 positive tests, bringing the total number of cases to 423,236.

It is the second day in a row that the number of new cases announced is higher than at any time during the pandemic.

Having not seen 6,000 cases a day since the beginning of May, the country has exceeded this threshold for three days in a row. It comes amid fears of new lockdown restrictions across the country.

The full list of 92 areas is listed in the chart below.

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