Coronavirus in the UK: How many confirmed cases are there in your area?
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Reuters
There have been more than 320,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus so far in the UK and over 41,000 people have died, government figures show.
However, these figures include only people who have died within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus and other measures suggest the number of deaths is higher.
The latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures have revealed that more than 56,000 people who died before 7 August - and who may not have been tested - had coronavirus mentioned on their death certificates.
Find out how the pandemic has affected your area and how it compares with the national average.
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Rise in new cases amid concern over hotspots
Daily confirmed cases began edging up again in July - after falling significantly from their April peak - as lockdown restrictions imposed in March were eased.
A further easing of lockdown restrictions was postponed last month. However, many businesses which had remained closed, such as bowling alleys and soft play centres, were allowed to reopen at the weekend.
On Wednesday, the government said there had been 812 newly-confirmed cases.
The recent rise in cases has been partly due to increased testing - and many of these tests are being targeted at areas where infection rates are highest.
As BBC health correspondent Nick Triggle points out, if you are testing more, you are likely to find more cases.
If you look at the percentage of tests coming back positive, the rise in cases becomes marginal, once daily fluctuations are taken into account, he says.
Separate data released from the ONS, which surveys a sample of households in England for current infection - not including care homes or hospitals - also suggests that coronavirus cases are stable across most of England.
The government has pledged to increase the size of this survey - from 28,000 to 150,000 a fortnight by October - to gain a clearer picture of how many people in the general population are infected at any given time.
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Despite the stable number of cases overall, the UK does have a number of local hotspots of the virus, which was first confirmed in the UK in January.
Last week Newark and Sherwood was added to the list of places, many in the north-west of the country, where lockdown measures have been re-introduced. Some businesses, like nail bars, are being allowed to reopen from Wednesday in Leicester - the first area to be subject to a local lockdown on 29 June.
In Scotland, a lockdown in Aberdeen has been extended for another week.
A Covid-19 watchlist is produced by Public Health England, based on an assessment of incidence rates, and other indicators such as trends in testing, healthcare activity and deaths.
Decline in daily deaths
While the number of new confirmed cases of coronavirus is rising again, government-announced deaths have continued to fall since a peak in mid-April.
On Wednesday the government reported 16 further deaths - 15 in England and one in Scotland. There were no new deaths announced in Northern Ireland or Wales.
Last week the government's death toll in England was reduced by 5,340 following a review of the way coronavirus deaths are counted.
New rules mean deaths anywhere in the UK are included in the coronavirus total only if they occurred within 28 days of a positive test. Previously in England, all deaths after a positive test were included.
New weekly totals giving the number of deaths in England within 60 days of a positive test are also to be released. Deaths occurring after this time will also be added to the total if Covid-19 is mentioned on the death certificate.
England has seen the majority of UK deaths from Covid-19. Using the 28-day cut-off, there have been just under 37,000.
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Overall death toll could be more than 60,000
When looking at the overall death toll from coronavirus, official figures count deaths in three different ways.
Government figures count people who tested positive for coronavirus and died within 28 days.
But the ONS publishes weekly updates using two other measures.
The first includes all deaths where coronavirus was mentioned on the death certificate, even if the person had not been tested for the virus. Tuesday's figures suggest there had been more than 56,000 deaths by 7 August.
The ONS also looks at all UK deaths over and above the number usually expected for the time of year - known as excess deaths. The latest figure for this measure shows the death toll was below 64,000 by 7 August.
In recent weeks, figures used in this third measure have been falling.
This is because the number of deaths from all causes registered in a single week - including coronavirus - has now stayed below the five-year average for eight weeks in a row.
Of the deaths registered in England and Wales in the week to 7 August, 152 involved coronavirus, or just 1.7% of the total of 8,945.
Figures released by the ONS at the end of July show that England had the highest levels of excess deaths in Europe between the end of February and the middle of June.
Some areas of Spain and Italy were harder hit than UK cities. But ONS analysis shows the epidemic in the UK was more widespread than in other countries. Scotland saw the third highest death rate in Europe - behind England and Spain. Wales was in fifth place and Northern Ireland in eighth.
The government has argued it is too soon to make definitive international comparisons but, as the impact of the first wave becomes clear in many countries, analysis is beginning to suggest the UK has been the hardest hit of the leading G7 nations.
What is the R number in the UK?
The "R number" is the average number of people an infected person will pass the disease on to.
If R is below one, then the number of people contracting the disease will fall; if it is above one, the number will grow.
The current estimate by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, known as Sage, for the R number across the whole of the UK is between 0.8 and 1.0 as of 14 August.
The estimate for England is between 0.8 and 1.0, while for Scotland it is between 0.6 and 1.0. The estimate for Wales is 0.7-0.9.
In Northern Ireland, it is between 1.2 and 2.0.
While the government has said in the past that the R number is one of the most important factors in deciding when lockdown measures can be eased, it now says these estimates do not fully represent current infection levels.
Sage says it is no longer confident R is below 1 in England. It says models using testing data, rather than epidemiological data such as hospital admissions, to predict transmission rates are suggesting higher values for R and these are likely to be reflected in the coming weeks.
