Covid-19 cases are falling steadily in almost all parts of Wiltshire.

But in some areas, including Salisbury, the decline has been slower.

According to Public Health England figures, many towns and villages in the central and northern part of the county have now got very low infection rates, as low as 30 per 100,000.

Some parts of Salisbury continue to be above 200.

Looking back to the previous weeks when rates soared to above 800, the decline is clear - it's just not as fast.

Wiltshire Council's director for public health reckons the reason for this is partly linked to a number of outbreaks in care homes.

"What we've predominantly seen in the Salisbury area is the case rate being slightly higher where it's linked to numbers in care homes," Kate Blackburn said.

"We've got a concentration of care homes in that area.

"Additionally it's more of an urban area so we've got more people closer together as opposed to more rural parts of Wiltshire but there is no specific clustering in Salisbury that we're aware of from the data that we get each day."

Infections in care homes had gone up after Christmas and Mrs Bluckburn had previously said that the trend seemed to be 'fewer homes but larger outbreaks'.

The public health boss also pointed out that testing levels in care homes are now at their highest in the pandemic, explaining why more cases are being picked up.

Having said that, both the number of care homes affected by Covid and the number of cases recorded have been going down.

In the week ending on February 2, 29 care homes reported new cases compared to a peak of 59 in mid January. 

Overall, cases are "continuing to head in the right direction" in all parts of Wiltshire, which Mrs Blackburn said was "very promising".

However, she stressed: "We really don't want to undo any progress made in the last month or so, so we need people to continue sticking to the rules to continue to minimise contact with other people as much as possible."

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