The number of people in Wirral's hospitals with COVID-19 has dropped by almost a third.

On February 8, there were 30 people being treated for the virus in the borough's hospitals, down from 49 a week earlier.

In January, Wirral's hospitals faced a huge influx of COVID patients, as numbers rose from 28 on December 28 last year, to 73 on January 4, and 98 by January 11, before gradually falling.

The final week of January gave us the first clear sign that this worrying trend was reversing, as the number fell from 93 patients to 49.

The latest figures provide a strong reassurance for Wirral's NHS that we have begun to decisively turn the tide on the virus.

Coronavirus cases are also down, by 38% in a week-on-week comparison.

In the week up to February 10, 1,618 COVID-19 infections were recorded in Wirral at a rate of 499 per 100,000.

That is down from the rate of 805 per 100,000 last week, with 2,611 cases registered.

The figures are good news and show that cases have dramatically fallen from the week up to January 4, when there were 11,000 cases in Wirral.

The infection rate is now returning towards the levels of around 300-400 per 100,000 we saw in November and early December, before Omicron became so dominant.

As for deaths, two people in Wirral died within 28 days of a positive COVID test in the week up to February 14, down on the previous week's total of seven.