LONG queues of cars formed at a mobile coronavirus testing centre in Blackburn this morning as a Cabinet minister praised its council for its rapid response to a ‘rising tide’ of infections in the town.

Health secretary Matt Hancock said extra measures introduced to control the spread of the infection were ‘fantastic’ as residents went to the diagnostic hub at Witton Park Academy. The centre is open 11am to 6pm today, tomorrow and Friday. People do not need to book in for a test, but do have to register beforehand at www.nhs.uk/ask-for-a-coronavirus-test.

Mr Hancock was responding to Blackburn with Darwen Borough public health director Professor Dominic Harrison promoting five new guidelines for local people to avoid the progressive reversal of the lifting of lockdown measures from July 27.

The new advice includes asking residents to reduce gatherings of families and friends to one household plus two members from another, face masks in all public spaces, inspections on small corner shops, asking people not to hug or shake hands and increased availability of mobile testing units including the one at the school which is open until tomorrow.

Mr Hancock stressed that despite a week on week rise in confirmed Covid-19 cases from 29.5 per 100,000 to 41, the level of infection was still far short of that which triggered a city-wide lockdown in Leicester last month after 944 positive tests in 14 days.

Nearby Pendle borough has also seen a sharp rise in positive coronavirus tests from 14.2 to 67.8 per 100,000 residents in the same seven days to July 10 giving it the second highest rate in the country with Blackburn with Darwen third.

Mr Hancock said: “On Blackburn, I think the council there are doing a fantastic job.

“There is a higher rate of Covid in Blackburn than the average across the country. It’s not as high as in Leicester. We’ve gone in and are supporting them, working with them, for instance putting in much more testing. And then they’ve taken these steps locally and I applaud that. This is exactly the sort of local action we want to see.”

Professor Harrison said: “These steps will help and we are appealing to everyone in Blackburn with Darwen to follow them to protect themselves and their loved ones. If we don’t, a local lockdown, like in Leicester, becomes a very real possibility.

“We know that people have been worried by the release of figures that show an increase in coronavirus cases in Blackburn with Darwen and don’t want a second lockdown to be introduced.

“The council does not want the borough to be in that position either, which is why we are introducing these new measures to give everyone simple steps they can follow to do their bit to help keep the spread of the virus under control.

“If numbers are not turning round and going down again by July 27, we are going to then have our next stage. We will go through the lockdown lifting measures and reverse them one by one until the numbers go down.

“But we’re not going to go from no lockdown and everything open to everything shut as Leicester has.”

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Prof Harrison underlined his concerns that the recent rise was caused by transmission within and between ‘household clusters’ in areas of the borough with streets of multi-generational families, often of South Asian heritage, living in terraced houses.

He said: “We have what we call a rising tide event rather than an outbreak. What we are seeing is a single case being infected, then going back to a household and all that household becoming infected.

“And when we look at the data what we can see is clusters in a part of the town, but the clusters are household clusters. A number of those are causing the rising tide event and we know that they are in mainly south-Asian areas, and they are in areas with high number of terraced houses with high numbers of occupants in the house.”

Cllr John Slater, leader of Blackburn with Darwen Council’s Conservative group, said: “We have got to applaud Dominic Harrison’s leadership on this. This is the right way to avoid a borough-wide lockdown like we have seen in the city of Leicester.”

Prof Harrison has also established an outbreak control management board.

Dr Sakthi Karunanithi, director of public health for Lancashire County Council, has warned Pendle residents to act to keep the level of Covid-19 infections down to avoid a full borough-wide lockdown.

He said: “We need your help now to reduce the number of cases in the future and keep Pendle out of lockdown.

“With the slight increase in the Covid-19 infection rate in Pendle, it’s really important to stay alert to the risks. We should all do what we can to limit the spread of infection.

“It can feel like things are back to normal, but we are still in the middle of a pandemic and there is risk for the virus to come back."

Council leader Mohammed Khan said: “We must all make sacrifices to avoid a local lockdown. Please continue to do your bit to stick to the rules to protect yourself and your family.”