The Covid-19 infection rate for Maldon district has now dropped back down below 500 per 100,000.

Latest complete figures - for the seven days up to Saturday, 16 January - show that there were 323 confirmed positive cases in the district, equal to 493 cases per 100,000 population.

These figures provide an accurate picture as Public Health England advises at least five full days are left before reporting. This is because test results are recorded against the date the test was taken and can take a few days to come back in.

For the same period for the whole of the Essex county area, the figures are 8,913 new cases, meaning 591.1 cases per 100,000.

This shows that while still high, the infection rate has more than halved since the peak rates for both Maldon district and the Essex area at the start of January.

This better news provides some light following Prime Minister Boris Johnson's press conference to the nation at 5pm today (Friday, 22 January) when it was announced that statistics suggest the new, more infectious variant of the Covid-19 virus may be more deadly than the original strain. However, scientists believe it is not resistant to the vaccines.