Wiltshire has no chance of becoming a coronavirus hotspot, a new online Covid-19 calculator suggests.

The tool, developed by Imperial College London, predicts what local authorities could see Covid-19 spikes in the days to September 20 using data on daily reported cases and weekly reported deaths and mathematical modelling.

The site also provides estimates for each local authority in England, Scotland and Wales on whether cases are likely to be increasing or decreasing in the following week and the probability of R(t) being greater than 1 in the following week.

According to the map, in the week to September 12 there is a zero per cent possibility that the Wiltshire Council area will see cases rise above 50 per 100,000, thus becoming a hotspot.

The following week, the likelihood is one per cent.

The map also shows that on September 5 the possibility of the R rate rising above 1 was 91 per cent.

Lead researcher Professor Axel Gandy, from the Department of Mathematics at Imperial, said: “The model allows us to project where local hotspots of COVID-19 are likely to develop in England and Wales based on the trends that we’re seeing in those areas.

"COVID-19 is, unfortunately, very much still with us, but we hope this will be a useful tool for local and national governments trying to bring hotspots under control.”

The map uses daily cases data for all local authorities in England from the government website.

Weekly deaths data for all local authorities in England and Wales comes from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The predictions assume no change in current interventions, such as lockdowns and school closures, in a local authority beyond those already taken about a week before the end of observations.

Researchers also note that an increase in cases in a local authority can be due to an increase in testing, which the model does not currently account for.

It also assumes all individuals within each local authority are equally likely to be infected, so demographic factors such as the age structure of the population are not considered.

Dr Swapnil Mishra, from the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, said: “We provide weekly predictions of the evolution of COVID-19 at the local authority level in England and Wales. Our model helps to identify hotspots – probable local areas of concern. We hope that our estimates will enable swift action at the local level to control the spread of the epidemic.”