A ROMSEY community leader has warned the UK could go into a second lockdown if the public continues to "be complacent" towards coronavirus rules.

According to Government data, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases totalled 568 on Saturday, September 12 - up from 558 on September 5.

The figures also revealed on August 29 there were 519 positive cases and on August 22 there were 513.

There was a slight spike in the number of people who tested positive for the deadly bug on September 4, which came to eight.

This was above the seven-day average - 4.7 cases.

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Now, Cllr Dorothy Baverstock, who represents Romsey Cupernham on Test Valley Borough Council (TVBC), has urged the public to stick to the rules until a vaccine is rolled out to eradicate coronavirus.

She said: "I think people have got complacent because they think 'we have been allowed to go on holiday, encouraged to return to work and children have gone back to school'.

"They are the problem because they are forgetting coronavirus is still a very active virus, so they need to comply with all of the rules and regulations otherwise we will go into a second lockdown.

"The virus is not going away until someone finds a vaccination to make us all immune."

Hampshire Chronicle: Cllr Dorothy Baverstock Cllr Dorothy Baverstock

When asked about the Government banning social gatherings of more than six people, Dorothy said it could be set to "eight or four people, but no one would be satisfied with the number", adding it could be difficult for families with four or more people living together.

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However, deputy leader of TVBC, Cllr Nick Adams-King, said he is not worried about the number of positive cases while stressing we should be focusing on the number of hospital admissions which "are currently stable".

He said: "We had a briefing about this last week at our cabinet meeting and the comment that was made by Public Health England was that a lot of the increases in cases in the last couple of weeks in Hampshire have been due to people coming back from holiday.

"It does not worry me, because I think the figures we should be looking at are the hospital admissions, and currently they are stable.

"I think the number of positive cases is going up because there are more tests available, but there also seems to be some evidence that the tests are picking up people who have had the virus, but have got antibodies rather than the virus itself."

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