More than 1,300 new coronavirus cases have been confirmed in the last seven days across Cornwall and Devon – but little more than half relate to tests from the last week.

Government statistics show that 1,369 new cases have been confirmed across the region in the past seven days in both pillar 1 data from tests carried out by the NHS and pillar 2 data from commercial partners, compared to 381 new cases confirmed last week.

However, the large rise is partly down to the Public Health England database issues that they had last weekend that meant thousands of cases - some 46 per cent of them - were not added to figures when they should have happened been, and therefore a lot of backdated cases that should be allocated to last week’s figures were only added on Sunday and Monday.

The number of new cases confirmed in Cornwall has risen to 237, with 144 in Plymouth, 85 in Torbay, and 903 in the Devon County Council area – with two thirds of those cases in Exeter, and more than 80 per cent of them linked to the university.

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Every region has seen cases more than double, although this is partly due to the data backlogging issues at the start of the week.

Of the 1,369 new cases confirmed, 745 of the cases have a specimen date of between October 2 and October 8 with the other 624 cases dating back into September.

Of the 745 of the cases that had a specimen date of between October 2 and October 8, 134 of Cornwall cases occurred in that period.

By specimen date, the most recent case in Cornwall was October 7.

The number of people in hospital in the South West has risen to 77, up from 48 as of last week, but there are currently only four people on a mechanical ventilator, and there have only been three deaths in hospital in the South West in the past 28 days, while NHS 111 data for both Devon and Cornwall has fallen significantly in the past seven days.

The Covid-19 cases are identified by taking specimens from people and sending these specimens to laboratories around the UK to be tested. If the test is positive, this is a referred to as a lab-confirmed case.

Confirmed positive cases are matched to ONS geographical area codes using the home postcode of the person tested.

Cases received from laboratories by 12.30am are included in the counts published that day. While there may have been new cases of coronavirus confirmed or people having tested positive, those test results either yet to reach PHE for adding to the dataset or were not received in time for the latest daily figures to be published.