The county's public health boss has said that he would "push back strongly" if it was suggested areas of Leicestershire were moved to higher alert levels.

Mike Sandys said that he has "no desire for us to lock down the county any earlier than we need to."

Talking about the new measures and what they mean for the county, the director of public health revealed that are a number of variables used to decide what restrictions are placed on different areas.

Shortly after the government announced its new three-tier system earlier this week, it was revealed that Leicestershire would be in the medium alert level.

Oadby and Wigston, is classed as 'high' alert due to it having existing local lockdown restrictions in place when areas were graded.

Latest data shows that every area in Leicestershire now has a rate of more than 100 cases per 100,000 people.

Asked what it would take for areas of Leicestershire to have their alert levels escalated, Mr Sandys said: "There still seems to be a sense nationally that the government will start having a conversation with you if your rates are over 100, in the context of everywhere in Leicestershire being above 100 and the national average now being 150 I find that's a bit of a meaningless argument.

"It is a numbers game, if rates continue to go up and reached 150,200 across the county at what point would someone from government come to me and say we've trusted you to lead this and for people to do the right thing but they're not, so we are going to have to consider imposing stuff that wasn't done voluntarily."

On whether he thought there was a risk that some areas in the county with high rates, could face further curbs, he added: "It would be influenced by being able to say what was driving it [the rise in cases], whether I thought the interventions would be effective but, ultimately it's about what the numbers are.

"But there are other things, you need to show you have an understanding of what the issues are so, if you had a big outbreak at a factory, and you can say this is the issue and contain it, then there is no need for extra restrictions.

"The number of over 60s testing positive is starting to become a critical indicator as well, from that point of view, we're keeping it out of that group at the moment.

"We're not just looking at one number, you're looking at the local issues, what the position is and the spread into a vulnerable community. There's quite a few variables."

Describing how decisions are reached, he explained: "Every week there are the meetings with the joint biosecurity centre and with Matt Hancock.

"Colleagues from Public Health England and colleagues from the joint biosecurity centre and we discuss what the picture is looking like, there is a joint discussion along the lines of which way things are you, are we comfortable we're on top of it, is there anything we want from the government around national restrictions.

"Different places have played it in different ways and you can debate whether the right thing to do is to say, yes we need tougher restrictions across areas or not, but from a Leicester and Leicestershire point of view, people are pretty fed up of being in lockdown and I would like to trust people to keep the levels as low as we can for as long as we can because we don't know how bad things will get.

"At the end of the day, it's not down to me, or the government, it's a numbers game unfortunately and that's down to people's behaviours.

"At the moment I'd be pushing back fairly strongly because I've no desire for us to lock down the county any earlier than we need to."