Six people in Richmond died from Covid-19 over the past week, the council leader said.

It is the biggest weekly death toll to coronavirus since the summer.

Cllr Gareth Roberts, leader of Richmond Council, gave the announcement via his weekly covid video broadcast.

The number of cases in Richmond has fallen and he stressed to residents the importance of "keeping up the good work" to ensure the spread of the virus remains low.

You can watch Cllr Roberts' two minute address above or read a transcript of it below.

Council leader's full message

Hello, these are the Covid-19 statistics for Richmond-upon-Thames.

Over the last seven days, the rate of infection in the borough has been 79.8 cases per 100,000 head of population, which equates to approximately 158 cases identified within the past seven days.

That brings the total number of cases identified since March to 2,945.

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Unfortunately, since the last update we have identified a further six deaths directly linked to Covid-19 in the borough and that brings the total number of cases identified since February to 161.

Over the last seven days 2,538 borough residents have been tested and that's yielded a positive return rate of 6.3% on those tests. The discrepancy between the number of tests conducted and the number of cases identified is explained by people being tested more than once.

As we leave the second lockdown and move into Tier 2, it is absolutely vital that we don't lose the good work which we have done over the last few weeks in driving down the infection rate in the borough.

However, in addition to ensuring that we have a healthy local population, it's also important that we maintain a healthy local economy. So, please, particularly at this time of year, if you can support local businesses, please do so.

And, of course, it's important that we keep following the basic rules with which we have become familiar over the recent months: wash your hands wherever possible, wear a face mask or covering when travelling on public transport or if you're in shops, supermarkets or similarly enclosed public spaces, maintain a social distance of at least two metres and please ensure you observe the rule of six.

It is really vital that we keep up the good work that we've been doing over the last few weeks.

So please keep yourself healthy and please keep others healthy too. Thank you.

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