It has now been 21 days since a positive coronavirus case was recorded in West Devon – while Torbay has gone two full weeks and East Devon, Torridge and Teignbridge a week without a new case being confirmed.

Just 13 new cases of coronavirus have been recorded from lab-confirmed tests across Devon and Cornwall in the last seven days, with more than half occurring in either Plymouth or across the Tamar in Cornwall.

West Devon has now seen no new cases for 21 days, while Torbay has not seen a new case for 14 days and Teignbridge and Torridge eight days.

East Devon has gone nine days without a new case being confirmed and has seen the number of cases in the region drop by one from last week – explained by being a duplicate historical case that had been recorded twice on the dashboard with a test in the community and in hospital having been wrongly identified as two separate cases rather than the same case.

Exeter has seen just one new case in the last week – although its positive figure remains the same following the deletion of a historical case today – while Mid Devon has seen two new cases and North Devon one. South Hams recorded its first case for 12 days today.

Plymouth has seen four new cases confirmed, while Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly registered six cases.

The previous seven days saw 44 new cases confirmed across Devon and Cornwall.

The figures come from the Government coronavirus data dashboard which is updated daily at https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/#category=ltlas&map=rate

Torridge also remains the district in England with the lowest positive case infection rate of anywhere, with the South Hams, West Devon and East Devon also in the bottom ten, with North Devon 11th, and Cornwall 13th, Teignbridge in 17th. Mid Devon ranks 20th, Exeter 29th, Plymouth 34th and Torbay 63rd.

Torridge is also the area with the third lowest number of cases, with only Rutland – the small historic county in England, and the City of London, an administrative region covering the Square Mile and populated by just 9,000 people – having had fewer cases.

And in terms of cases per 100,000 people, Torridge has the lowest of anywhere in England, just 52.8 per 100,000, so just one in 2,000 people have tested positive for coronavirus. The South Hams, West Devon, North Devon and East Devon and also have infection rates of less than one in 1,000 people.

In total, Torridge has had just 36 positive cases, with 53 in West Devon, 80 in the South Hams, 93 in North Devon, 95 in Mid Devon, 139 in East Devon, 147 in Teignbridge, 168 in Exeter, 221 in Torbay, 358 in Plymouth and 575 in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

Of those positive cases, just 13 occurred in the last seven days, compared to 44 and 71 in the previous weeks.

The COVID-19 cases are identified by taking specimens from people and sending these specimens to laboratories around the UK to be tested. If the test is positive, this is a referred to as a lab-confirmed case.

Confirmed positive cases are matched to ONS geographical area codes using the home postcode of the person tested.

The data is now shown by the date the specimen was taken from the person being tested and while it gives a useful analysis of the progression of cases over time, it does mean that the latest days’ figures may be incomplete.

Cases received from laboratories by 12:30am are included in the counts published that day. While there may have been new cases of coronavirus confirmed or people having tested positive, those test results either yet to reach PHE for adding to the dataset or were not received in time for the latest daily figures to be published.