Is Milton Keynes finally over the peak of the Covid crisis as new case numbers drop again today?

Local figures staring stabilising late last week to between 300 and 350 cases a day after spiralling out of control throughout December and early January.

Monday saw the figure go down to 272 while yesterday there were 270 new positive tests.

Sadly though,18 Covid linked deaths took place in MK over the same few days and the hospital continues to be full of seriously ill Covid patients.

Health experts had predicted this would be the worst week for the virus, as people who contracted it over Christmas - perhaps due to increased social mixing - would only now start to be showing serious symptoms needing hospital treatment. These predictions are verified by the increased national and local death rates over the past few days.

Currently the total number of MK cases since the start of the pandemic is 14,382, while the city's death toll is 288.

Nationally there were 47,525 new cases today and 1,564 deaths.