A person has died after contracting Covid-19, the leader of Richmond Council said today.

It is the first coronavirus-linked death among residents of Richmond borough for a full two months.

In his weekly video update, Cllr Gareth Roberts reported the loss and gave an update on the number of new cases and tests completed, the effectiveness of lockdown measures and the introduction of rapid lateral flow testing capabilities.

You can watch his two-minute broadcast above or read a transcript of it below.

Council leader's full message

Hello, these are the latest Covid-19 statistics for Richmond upon Thames. In the last seven days there have been 239 cases of the virus linked to the borough. This brings the total number of cases identified since March to 2,530.

Read more: Drop in coronavirus cases in Richmond neighbourhoods

Unfortunately, there has been one new death directly linked to the virus over the last seven days. Therefore since February the total number of deaths directly linked to the virus in the borough stands at 154.

Over the last seven days we have tested 2,808 people and we have had a positive return rate on those tests of 8.8%. The explanation for the discrepancy between the number of cases identified and the positive return rate is that people have been tested more than once.

I know that these new lockdown restrictions are very hard for many people and of course for many of our local businesses. However, we do know that these additional measures work. When we went into the additional Tier 2 measures just a few weeks ago, we saw that had a beneficial impact on slowing the spread of the virus.

Therefore, if we are to make this lockdown work, we need to follow the simple rule of staying at home as much as possible and only going out for essential purposes.

Read next: A very personal tale of covid's impact on Richmond councillor Andree Frieze's family

You may also be aware that the borough has been chosen to take part in a mass testing project and we are just waiting for the final details of that to be shared with us by the Department for Health.

As soon as we have more details on the mass testing of asymptomatic cases, we will be in touch with you via the usual methods.

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