COVID infections in Wirral are down, but the pattern is much less clear than it was last week.

In the seven days up to March 12, 138 virus cases were registered in the borough at a rate of 43 per 100,000.

That is down from 159 cases at the higher rate of 49 per 100,000 recorded in the previous week's figures.

The 138 cases reported this week is the lowest figure since September 2, when the exact same number of infections were registered.

This is good progress, but it happened at a far slower rate this week compared to the week before.

In fact, cases went up in two of the last seven days, from 159 to 163 between March 5 and 6, and from 150 to 155 between March 9 and March 10.

Across the week as a whole, the seven-day period to March 12 did see less cases recorded than the week to March 5, 138 compared to 159 as mentioned earlier.

But this is a far slower rate of decline than in the last week-by-week comparison.

The March 5 figure of 159 cases was a big fall on the 288 infections recorded in the week up to February 26.

The causes of this changing pattern, and whether it is maintained, remain to be seen.

Of course, schools reopened to all children last Monday, but the latest figures are just beginning to take this into account and will not have captured the full effect of this aspect of lockdown easing yet.

Figures for the next few weeks will reveal the true impact of the first part of stage one in the government's roadmap out of lockdown.

In the rest of the Liverpool City Region a similar pattern was at play, cases fell in the week up to March 12 compared to the seven-days to March 5, but not as quickly as they have done in previous weeks.

St Helens has the highest rate in the region at 83 per 100,000, down slightly from 85 the week before.

Sefton's rate of 57 is also down from 71 last week, while Halton saw a small decline in its rate from 65 to 55.

Liverpool and Knowsley recorded the same pattern, with the rates in both boroughs falling from 61 to 52.

But these falls are also lower than those recorded last week.

Knowsley, for example, recorded a much steeper decline in its infection rate from the week up to February 26 compared to the week up to March 5, with its rate down from 123 in the former week to 61 in the latter.

Similarly, St Helens' rate fell from 167 to 85 in the February 26-March 5 comparison, but in the most recent weekly comparison that rate of 85 only declined to 83.