SWINDON’S health boss says Covid rule-breakers are likely to be behind a rising case rate that makes the town an “outlier” in the region.

Whereas numbers are dropping in almost every other county in the south west, Swindon’s is going in the wrong direction, according to the latest government figures.

Swindon Borough Council’s director of public health Steve Maddern fears people mixing with other households may well be responsible for the increase.

He says the case rate has almost doubled among young adults aged between 20 and 24 in the last week.

He said: “Swindon is once again becoming an outlier and it does not make me very happy.”

“My thinking around this is that obviously there has been some form of mixing and non-compliance to the rules although this is very much anecdotal.

“We encouraged people not to mix across half-term and seeing the increase among younger adult age range may suggest that might be the case.

“What we have seen is we have seen multiple cases per household, so it seems that families are becoming all infected at the same time.”

He believes the main driver is “Covid fatigue”.

“People are just tired and fed up with Covid, as I know we all are,” Mr Maddern said. “And there’s a real energy and hope around the new roadmap but we’re not going to get that roadmap if we don’t follow the rules.

“The key message here is please follow the rules, the roadmap is hopeful and ambitious, but we will only make those dates highlighted in the roadmap if we meet those criteria, which one of them is keeping our prevalence down.”

The rate in the borough has increased from 4.5 per cent last week to 5.1 per cent this week. The seven-day rolling infection rate is 115.7 cases per 100,000 people, up from 93.2 per 100,000 last week.

It comes after police issued hundreds of pounds’ worth of fines at illegal house parties in Old Town, Haydon Wick and Rodbourne.

Mr Maddern said the rise could be down to a ‘blip’ given the way figures are reported over the course of a week – but added: “Swindon seems to be almost a hotbed for parties.

“Last weekend there were at least three parties that the police had to go and intervene with. So I think it’s just reflecting the mood of the nation that people are just tired and fed up.

“The case rates are going down – not for Swindon at the moment – but there are still high, so it really isn’t a time for complacency.”

There were 39 new Covid-19 cases confirmed yesterday in Swindon according to Public Health England.

Over the last week 2,383 symptomatic tests were carried out, up from 2,268 last.

This includes 182 tests at the Broadgreen site, 1,217 at Wroughton Park and Ride, 312 at the civic annex mobile testing unit and 672 postal test kits.

The council has done 352 asymptomatic tests in the same period.

Mr Maddern said: “We found our first positive test. It definitely shows that there’s value in undertaking that.”

The Park South community centre testing site was launched yesterday.

This week the council has written out to 250 small businesses including warehouses and non-essential and essential retail with fewer than 50 staff members to invite them to participate in the lateral flow testing.

Outbreaks have continued to decline.

“In the last week, we have reported only six outbreaks across education, businesses and health and social care settings,” said Mr Maddern.

“There were no outbreaks of significance, and we’re very mindful from our social media, people were kind of questions whether the increase in numbers was related to the increasing number.

“Although we’ve got some outbreaks ongoing the numbers are small.”

Mr Maddern said the increase in cases was essentially in the SN1 and SN25 postcodes, with smaller increases in SN2 and SN4.

Boris Johnson’s roadmap out of the third national lockdown was revealed on Monday and begins with pupils’ return to schools on Monday, March 8.

The prime minister hopes to remove all social restrictions and reopen the country fully on June 21.