THE number of patients receiving care at Warrington Hospital after contracting coronavirus increased over the weekend.

The sad news was confirmed this afternoon, Monday, by Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in its latest Covid-19 update.

At present, 61 beds at the Lovely Lane site are occupied by patients that have tested positive for the virus in the past 14 days or less.

Of this number, two are in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

This is a rise of eight patients since Friday, with the number in the ICU falling by one.

However, an additional 12 patients were discharged from Warrington Hospital over the weekend after recovering from coronavirus.

This takes the trust’s virus discharge total since the start of the pandemic to 3,122.

However, another Covid patient death has been recorded since Friday, with the trust’s virus death toll to date rising to 621 as a result.

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Across Warrington as a whole, the number of new Covid cases being recorded continues to fall, the latest official data shows.

During the week up to February 8, which is the most recent period for which figures are available, 1,163 new cases were detected in the town.

This takes into account lab-reported tests and positive rapid lateral flow tests that do not have a negative confirmatory lab-based PCR test within 72 hours.

It demonstrates an infection rate of 555.4 cases among every 100,000 residents, which is the 292nd highest rate in the UK at present.

Comparatively, the previous seven-day period up to February 1 saw 1,514 infections recorded at a rate of 723.