There has been a further rise in hospital deaths in Cornwall involving a patient who tested positive for coronavirus.

The death was recorded at the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust on Tuesday this week (December 22) and has now been published in figures by NHS England.

It follows three deaths at the Trust last weekend and another death at the Cornwall Partnerships NHS Trust, again over the weekend, with another four deaths reported during the preceding week also.

There have now been 79 deaths registered to the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust and 27 to the Cornwall Partnerships NHS Trust, bringing the overall total number of hospital deaths in Cornwall to 106.

Nationally a further 161 people who tested positive for Covid-19 have now died, bringing the total number of confirmed reported deaths in hospitals in England to 48,311.

Patients were aged between 44 and 100 years old and all except eight of them - aged 64 to 94 years old - had known underlying health conditions.

The dates of their deaths ranged from December 17 to 25 and their families have been informed.

Of these, eight deaths were reported in the south west.

Covid-19 case information for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly over the last two days has now been published.

As of 4pm yesterday (Friday, Christmas Day) there had been 72 new cases recorded in the preceding 24 hours.

The UK had 32,725 new cases reported in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total to 2,221,312 nationally since the start of the pandemic.

Figures for today have now also been added. As of 3.45pm today there have been 117 new cases recorded in the preceding 24 hours.

The total number of cases in the local authority area is now 4,844.

There were 490 cases recorded in the seven days leading up to December 21. Data from the most recent five days is not shown due to being incomplete.

This represented a weekly rate of 85.7 cases per 100,000 people.

The UK had 34,693 new cases reported in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total to 2,256,005 nationally since the start of the pandemic.

The government has given a warning about the information during the holiday period.

It states that UK cases and deaths will be updated every day throughout the holiday period, but with no data for Northern Ireland on December 24 to 28, no data over deaths on Scotland on December 25 to 28 and January 1 and 4, and no data for Wales on December 25 and January 1.

It warns: "UK totals for each day will reflect the sum of the nations which reported data. Cases and deaths that would have been reported during these periods are likely to instead be reported on the following days.

"As a result, any changes to published data should be interpreted with caution during this period, as they may be a result of changes to reporting schedules."