The steady fall in Covid-19 cases around the country continues - with both the UK as a whole and areas in the North East seeing rates of the virus on April 20 around 30% lower than a week earlier.
Now, just two places in the North East had more than 500 cases per 100,000 people in the seven days to April 20. At the end of March, before free mass testing for Covid-19 ended, just ten areas saw rates that low - and some saw case rates almost three times higher.
Though cases have continued to fall during April - even compared to similar levels of testing earlier in the month - there remain hundreds of Covid patients in North East hospitals and it is expected that more people have Covid-19 than just those showing up in official figures.
