Latest coronavirus rates revealed across Black Country and Staffordshire

The fresh government data, which will be used to make decisions on imposing local lockdowns if rates rise across the country, came as no new Covid-19 deaths were recorded in the region's hospitals for the second day this week.

The latest Public Health England snapshot is for the week ending June 21 and shows that Wolverhampton had the highest rate of new cases per week in the Black Country.

However the city's weekly rate of 9.9 new cases per 100,000 people was lower than the 13.7 new cases in Shropshire and 18 cases in Stoke-on-Trent.

In Leicester, where a 'local lockdown' has seen fresh restrictions imposed, the rate was 140.2. That is more than double the rate of Bradford, which is second highest on the list with a rate of 69.4 and more than 14 times higher than Wolverhampton.

The case rate per 100,000 for each borough in the Black Country, Birmingham and Staffordshire was as follows:

• Wolverhampton 9.9

• Birmingham 9.6

• Staffordshire 9.4

• Sandwell 7.3

• Walsall 4.6

• Dudley 3.7

The figures on coronavirus rates, published by Public Health England, show the rate of new cases in each area, based on tests that have been carried out in laboratories (‘pillar 1’ of the Government’s testing programme) and in the wider community (‘pillar 2’).

As such the figures gives a more comprehensive overview of the country than the daily figures for local areas that are published on the Department of Health website, which are based only on pillar 1 testing, which are updated daily on our "latest deaths and cases page" here.

So far 2,518 people have died with coronavirus in hospitals across the Black Country, Birmingham and Staffordshire and 600 people have died in the region's care homes after catching Covid-19.

You can see the full list, showing the number of cases per 100,000 population across the UK here.