Wirral's COVID infection rate has plummeted once again in great news for the borough as more shops and services reopen today.

In the week up to April 8, there were 33 cases in Wirral at a rate of 10 per 100,000.

That is down on the 61 cases recorded in the previous week at a rate of 19 per 100,000.

To put the figure of 10 per 100,000 into perspective, this means that in the last week just one in 10,000 people in Wirral have had a COVID-19 test which returned a positive result.

In the week up to January 8, exactly three months earlier, the rate was 988 per 100,000.

The remarkable progress has been made possible by strict lockdown measures and the rollout of the vaccination programme.

This fall in cases has led to a major reduction in the number of people going to Wirral's hospitals with the virus.

On April 6, the latest day for which we have figures, there were two people hospitalised with COVID-19 in Wirral, down from eight the week before.

On April 2, for one day only, Wirral actually registered just one COVID patient.

It is huge progress from the depths of late January, when over 270 people were being treated for the virus in Wirral's hospitals.

In fact, the figures are the lowest seen since March 22 last year, before the first national lockdown was announced.

Public health officials will be looking anxiously at the figures over the next few weeks to see what impact the reopening of 'non-essential' retail and hospitality businesses, albeit only for outdoor service, will be.

Shops, hairdressers, pubs and restaurants across our region have been opening their doors for the first time in several months today.

Large crowds have been reported outside many retailers in the city of Liverpool, with Primark staff reportedly telling customers they will have to wait at least an hour to get in.

Across the rest of the Liverpool City Region, cases have been falling on the same week-by-week comparison as was used for Wirral.

In Liverpool, the infection rate was down from 25 per 100,000 to 18 per 100,000, while Knowsley's rate also fell, from 23 to 19.

In St Helens, the rate was 31 last week, but this has now declined to 29, while Sefton's rate has fallen from 26 to 21.

Halton's rate has also come down, from 36 last week to 19 in the latest week's figures.

More than half the population in the Liverpool City Region has now been vaccinated against COVID-19.

The latest figures from the NHS show more than 774,000 people in the city region have had at least one dose of the vaccine out of a population of 1.5m.

This includes 96% of all pensioners in the region and 92% of everyone aged between 50 and 64.