Four residents died in the last week after contracting Covid-19, Richmond Council's leader said.

In his weekly update Cllr Gareth Roberts said 3,588 locals were tested for the coronavirus - a record weekly number.

He urged people to guard against complacency even though the vaccination programme has started.

You can watch his two-minute video message at the top of this page or read a transcript of it below.

Gareth Roberts' message

These are the Covid-19 statistics for Richmond upon Thames. Over the last seven days, the infection rate for the borough is 103.5 cases per 100,000 head of population. And this equates to approximately 205 cases identified within the past seven days.

This brings the total number of cases identified since March to 3,154.

Unfortunately, since the last update there have been a further four deaths directly linked to the virus. Therefore since February the total number of deaths within the borough stands at 165.

Over the last seven days 3,588 people have been tested with the positive return rate on those tests of 4.5%. The discrepancy between the number of people tested, the number of cases identified and the positive return rate is explained by people being tested more than once.

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You will now by now that the vaccination programme has begun being rolled out in the UK. While this is undoubtedly good news, we must not let it be cause for complacency.

We need to ensure that we are following all the rules with which we have become so familiar: washing our hands wherever possible, wearing a face mask when travelling on public transport, when in shops, supermarkets and similarly enclosed public spaces, maintaining a social distance of at least two metres and observing the rule of six.

We are looking down the sharp end of going into Tier 3 and if we are to avoid that then we need to follow the rules. That is the only way to avoid Tier 3, and even that is by no means certain.

So, over this Christmas period we must be extra vigilant so that we try to stop the spread of this virus as much as we possibly can.

Over the coming weeks, stay well, protect yourselves and protect others. Thank you.

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