Rutland has recorded seven 'cases' today, further increasing it's 7-day infection rate.

No deaths were recorded, which has been the case for more than ten weeks.

As reported yesterday, the last recorded such death in England's smallest county was on Wednesday April 28. Before that it was Thursday March 25.

Meanwhile, the 7-day case rate for Rutland increased slightly from 205.4 cases per 100,000 of population yesterday to 207.9 today, as the number of positive tests over the past week increased from 82 yesterday to 83 today.

Today's 7 cases compares with 7 yesterday, 6 on Wednesday, 6 last Friday and 8 the Friday before.

The county's 7-day infection rate remains well below the national average and as mentioned Rutland hasn't recorded a death with Covid-19 since April.

Rutland's current 207.9 case per 100,000 case rate compares with 130.2 last Friday and 65.1 the Friday before and today's England average of 275.6 cases per 100,000.

However, there has been a large increase in testing recently, with 1.1 million tests today and 7.3 million over the past week.

England's 7-day case rate has crept up in recent weeks, whilst in Rutland it has fluctuated at low levels, at one stage recently amongst the lowest in the country, before increasing strongly in recent weeks.

Rutland has now recorded 1882 cases recorded since the start of the pandemic- about one case for every 25 residents. This compares with the England average of almost one-in-15.

The number of deaths remains at 65, the same as yesterday- about one for every 600 residents, which compares with the national average of one-in-500 residents.

Meanwhile in Lincolnshire, 56 cases of Covid-19 were recorded in South Kesteven but again there were no deaths.

As reported yesterday, the last fatality related to the virus in the district was on Wednesday May 5.

The last fatality priority to that was Tuesday March 25, showing South Kesteven has experienced just two deaths with Covid-19 in more than 14 weeks.

However, national deaths were 29 today and 176 over the week, a figure that is rising. The weekly total is 53 cases or 41.3% higher than the week before.

Today's, 56 positive tests compares with 33 yesterday, 35 on Wednesday, 22 last Friday and 12 the Friday before.

The 7-day rate is now 131.3 cases per 100,000, compared 113.7 yesterday, 56.2 last Friday and 40 the Thursday before.

However, despite the rate doubling over the past week, it remains below half the England average of 275.6 cases per 100,000.

The England average 7-day rate has steadily risen in recent weeks, while the South Kesteven figure has tended to fluctuate at a much reduced level before creeping upwards.

Overall, there have been 2,337 new cases of coronavirus in Greater Lincolnshire so far this week, but hospitals in the county have seen no COVID-related deaths for more than a month.

The government's COVID-19 dashboard on Friday reported 343 new cases in Lincolnshire, 234 in North East Lincolnshire and 70 in North Lincolnshire.

The total of 647 is now the second highest daily cases number since November 19, which saw 676 cases confirmed.

The figure is 61.35% higher than last Friday's 401 cases – and 44% up on the 1,623 cases by this time last week.

Nationally, cases increased by 35,707 to 5,058,093 while deaths rose by 29 to 128,365.

Nationally, the Office For National Statistics says COVID-19 infections increased by more than 50% in the week to July 3.

England's R number – the average number of people each person with COVID-19 goes on to infect – has also risen to between 1.2-1.5 – up from between 1.1-1.3 this time last week.

Cases of the Delta variant, originally discovered in India, have also risen by 34% nationwide – from 161,981 to 216,249.

The Prime Minister's office has urged people to carry on using the NHS COVID-19 app after reports users were deleting it to avoid being pinged to self isolate.

Earlier this week contact tracing figures had shown a 60% rise in the number of exposure alerts sent to the users of the NHS COVID-19 app.

The app sent 356,036 alerts in the week to June 30 – up 62% from 219,391 the previous week.