Local lockdowns running at a hundred per week, Matt Hancock reveals

More than 100 outbreaks of coronavirus are happening each week, Matt Hancock has revealed, as it emerged door-to-door testing will be used increasingly to contain localised infections.

Writing for The Telegraph, the Health Secretary said many outbreaks were being dealt with “swiftly and silently”, through small lockdowns and new testing regimes such as portable walk-in centres.

A farm in Herefordshire became the first such business in the country to go into lockdown on Sunday, after 73 workers tested positive for Covid-19, leading to concerns over further outbreaks happening as seasonal workers gather for harvest time.

Mr Hancock will this week review the lockdown imposed on Leicester, the first city in Britain to have restrictions reimposed because of a spike in cases there.

The Government has been highly critical of the response of local authorities in the city, and in particular of its Labour mayor Sir Peter Soulsby, and one option would be for central government to take over the running of the city for a temporary period.

Mr Hancock is expected to stop short of doing so, but is likely to announce closer monitoring of the performance and decisions of the council.

In his article for the Telegraph, Mr Hancock discloses that local interventions, which include the closure of pubs, schools and businesses and increased testing at a local level, are running into triple figures each week, a higher figure than had previously been reported.

He says that with testing capacity now at more than 300,000 tests per day, the Government will “hunt down the virus” by blitzing any area with a significant outbreak.

He writes: “Each week there are over a hundred local actions taken across the country – some of these will make the news, but many more are swiftly and silently dealt with.

“This is thanks in large part to the incredible efforts of local authorities – all of whom have stepped up and published their local outbreak control plans in line with the end of June deadline.”

He says the increased testing capacity, the highest in Europe, means “we can take more targeted local action and less national lockdown, to restore the freedom of the majority while controlling the virus wherever we can find it”.

Mr Hancock’s disclosure of the level of local outbreaks comes after Boris Johnson urged workers to start returning to their offices and other workplaces to help restore the economy.

There remains tension in Government between the need to protect public health and the need to prevent an economic meltdown, and Mr Hancock’s intervention serves as a reminder to his colleagues that the danger of a second wave of the virus remains. Another 650 cases of coronavirus were confirmed in the UK on Sunday, with 21 more deaths.

In Leicester door-to-door testing is being rolled out in the worst affected areas of the city to test everyone in a given area, whether they have symptoms or not. The Telegraph understands that this will be used more widely to stifle outbreaks at a street by street level in other areas in the coming weeks and months.

Door-to-door delivery of home testing kits is also being trialed, together with portable walk-in centres which are being placed within outbreak zones, coupled with public information campaigns to encourage people to get tested.

Some of the local lockdowns involve individual premises such as six pubs which have closed after individual members of staff or customers tested positive.

Others, such as the Herefordshire farm, involve far more widespread outbreaks. Around 200 staff at AS Green and Co, which supplies vegetables to Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's, Aldi and Asda, will spend the next two weeks isolated in temporary mobile home accommodation in a bid to control the spread after 73 staff members, many of whom had no symptoms, tested positive. It follows a number of outbreaks in meat processing plants.

The Government has drawn up a watchlist of 20 towns that are at the highest risk of going into lockdown. They include Bradford, Blackburn and Kirklees, where higher than average infection rates has categorised them as being of “concern” or needing “enhanced” support.

Two Kent towns, Ashford and Folkestone, are also on the list of potential hotspots.

Some of the outbreaks are so localised that they involve a single postcode, which on average covers 15 properties, though it can vary between one and 100.