COUNCIL leader Sam Corcoran says hospital admissions "have probably not yet peaked" although the number of Covid-19 cases in Cheshire East have dropped.

The Labour councillor believes infections are slowing because of the impact of the tier three and tier four regulations, brought in at the end of 2020.

But with admissions lagging "about a week behind the number of new infections" pressure is still high on NHS staff.

Making his comments via a Twitter update, Cllr Corcoran said: "The impact of new restrictions takes about two weeks to feed through to the number of infections.

"I predicted a few days ago that we should start to see the infection number plateau due to tier three and then tier four restrictions implemented after Christmas — and then the numbers should fall as the impact of lockdown is seen.

"That does seem to be happening, as the number of new infections per day seems to have stopped rising.

"However, 201 new confirmed cases in one day [Monday, January 11] is still very high. The numbers admitted to hospital lag about a week behind the number of new infections, so the numbers admitted to hospital have probably not yet peaked, and our hospitals are already under pressure."

Over the past week (January 5-11) Cheshire East has seen a seven per cent drop in the numbers testing positive (1,632).

The latest data (from January 6) puts the borough's average at 450.1 cases per 100,000 residents, a fall from two days previously, when the average was 496.9.

However, four new deaths in Cheshire East were confirmed yesterday and 26 in the last week, which is a rise of 62.5 per cent.

In total since the start of the pandemic there have been 548 Covid-19 deaths in the borough.

On January 5 there were 143 patients being treated for coronavirus at Leighton Hospital.