North West Leicestershire has had just 10 confirmed Covid cases in the past seven days.

Rates and cases are dropping across the county with more than half of the area's districts and boroughs now having seven-day infection rates below the national average.

North West Leicestershire has had 10 new infections confirmed in the last week – but at the end of March, the area was recording numbers in the high 80s.

The district has recorded 6,111 cases since records began in March last year.

But now its current seven-day rate stands at 9.7 cases per 100,000 people – the lowest by some margin in the county.

It is a far cry from two months ago when Leicestershire health bosses singled out Ashby as an area of concern Ashby was named as a Covid hotspot in March.

England's rate is now 21.4 cases per 100,000 people.

Other areas where the rate is lower than average are Charnwood – 19.9, Hinckley and Bosworth – 20.3 and Oadby and Wigston – 19.3.

Blaby – 23.6 and Melton – 23.4, are hovering just above the average while Harborough's now sits at 26.2 -even higher than Leicester's current figure – 34.4.

According to the same set of gov.uk stats, there have been 273 cases recorded across the city and county since this time last week – back in January there were weeks when daily figures were in the high 800s.

Speaking recently, Mike Sandys, the county's director of public health, said he was 'pleasantly surprised' that rates were falling after the April 12 unlocking.

"The rates have been bobbling around a bit and we can't quite them into the single figures but it has kept on drifting down since April 12," he said.

"I know there has been criticism of the caution with the road map but I'd rather stick with and get to three weeks after some opening up and think 'Do you know what, we're not seeing bad results, let's keep this going, rather than saying let's open everything now'."

"It's not that long ago that the cases map looked a lot different to how it does now.

"We're in a much better place, you're always going to get areas notably in higher concentrated areas where rates will be higher but it's ten per cent of what is was a couple of months ago.

"If there are areas now where there are a number of cases they tend to be related to individual outbreaks, we've talked about schools, workplaces, sometimes it might be a household.

"For a while now it's been much easier to sit with the team and work out what's happening and the message at one point was stop worrying about hotspots because it's everywhere, it's not like that now."