A DISTRICT bordering York now has one of the lowest Covid rates in the country after only two new cases were confirmed in seven days.

Public Health England said Ryedale's rolling seven day rate in the week to May 12 was 3.6 per 100,000 people, the tenth lowest in the UK.

It said Hambleton also had a low rate of 8.7 per 100,000 after eight cases were confirmed while Selby, which recently was the UK's worst Covid hotspot, now had the country's 11th worst rate of 53 after 48 new cases were confirmed.

It said the rate for the whole of North Yorkshire had fallen to 18.8, while York's remained stable at 18 and East Yorkshire's had risen slightly to 27.6.

Nationwide, between May 11 and 17, 15,540 people had a confirmed positive test result, an increase of only 1.1 per cent compared to the previous 7 days.

Meanwhile, York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said it currently had two Covid patients at its two hospitals, in York and Scarborough, neither of them in intensive care.

The figure is down from three last week but up from just one patient the week before, and it compares with 242 Covid patients at the pandemic's peak on January 26.