Cases of the Indian variant of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Wirral.

Wirral Council's public health team said they have detected a "very small number" of Indian variant cases, but would not confirm the precise number.

The variant is not spreading rapidly in Wirral at the moment, but contact tracing has been carried out for those who have contracted this variant of the virus and they are being supported to self-isolate.

Julie Webster, Wirral Council's director of public health, said: "As we progress through the roadmap, variants are likely to be part of how we live with COVID-19 and it is vital that we adapt and respond to the changing nature of the virus to protect our area.

"We are monitoring the situation closely but we have had no recent COVID-19 outbreaks and Wirral's 7-day case rate remains low.

"My advice to everyone remains the same: the best way to stop the spread of the virus is to follow the guidelines – remember hands, face, space and fresh air, get vaccinated and take up the offer of regular testing.

"We are heading in the right direction. Let's keep going and Keep Wirral Well."

The news comes as the variant first discovered in India appears to be spreading quickly in different parts of the country and could yet put the next stage of the roadmap on hold.

There has been a 44% weekly increase in the number of areas in England that have recorded a case.

Figures from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, first reported by Sky News, found that the Indian variant had been detected in 127 local authorities in the week ending May 8 – compared with 71 the week before.

However, 40 of the 127 areas only identified one case.

We know that there have been cases located in the Sefton area – where surge testing has been deployed in a bid to clamp down on the spread of the variant.

The Wellcome Sanger Institute uses weekly data as a rolling average of a two week period.

It identified an average of 62 weekly cases of the Indian variant in Sefton based on the data from the weeks ending May 1 and May 8.

But the work to contain Sefton's outbreak, which centred on the Formby area, appears to be working.

The overall infection rate had reached close to 60 cases per 100,000 people at the end of last week, but it has now fallen to just over half that rate.

In Liverpool, the Institute sequenced a weekly average of 4.5 cases of the variant based on data across the two weeks mentioned above.

There was an average of 0.5 cases located in Knowsley in that time, 0.5 cases on the Halton borough and an average of 1.5 cases in the St Helens area.

This level of cases does not seem to have had a large impact on the overall infection rates across our region.

In Wirral, the infection rate remains very low.

The latest figures show that in the week up to May 15 the rate stood at seven per 100,000, down from eight per 100,000 the week before.

In Halton, a similarly small decline, from 15 to 14 in a week-by-week comparison, was recorded, while in Knowsley the rate is now nine, down from 12.

Liverpool's rate has also fallen to nine, down from 13, but in St Helens the rate has risen from 10 to 19.

Sefton, the borough in which the Formby outbreak happened, has seen its rate fall from 51 to 31.