Call to redouble efforts to stop the spread

Gerry Taylor, the City Council's Executive Director of Public Health and Integrated Commissioning, said there had been little change, with the city's Covid rates remaining high.

In her weekly video for the city's 278,000 residents, she said: "Unfortunately, we're not seeing any real change in the number of positive cases of Covid across the city and our infection rates continue to be relatively high. This really reinforces the need for us all to redouble our efforts to reduce the spread of Covid-19. So I'd ask everyone to be particularly careful about following the guidance to stay at home if we can, and only go to work if we really can't work from home.

"For anyone who has to go out to work, it's also really important to follow all of the Covid secure guidance when you are there. That includes while on your break at work and on your way to and from work, as well as following the hands, face, space guidance to keep yourself and your colleagues safe and help bring rates down.

"We are seeing transmission in the community,  within and between families as well as some cases in workplaces. We're continuing to work with businesses to help them keep their workplaces Covid secure and we've got information on our website to help.

"We all need to be particularly cautious and pull together as a city to get the number of cases down. We have managed to do this before and we know we can achieve it again.

"So I would urge everyone who has done such a brilliant job over the last year of sticking to the rules, to do everything they can to help get case numbers down by following the guidance at all times and not letting their guard down anywhere."

Gerry's video for residents can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/IJR1sMZyKko