THERE are now more than 40 people in Cumbria known to have tested positive for coronavirus, it has been confirmed.

Despite the official government statistics for the county continuing to be a week out of date, Colin Cox, Cumbria County Council’s Director of Public Health, this afternoon said that locally available figures show that there are now 42 confirmed covid-19 cases in the county.

Twenty one of these are in the north and west of the county and 21 in south Cumbria.

“All of the official publicly available data will be out of date,” said Mr Cox.

“These figures are also the ones for people who have been formally tested.

"They do not include people who may be potentially positive but who have not been tested.”

He said some of the patients will now be recovering at home.

But at present three are in hospital in north Cumbria and six remain in hospital in south Cumbria.

No information is currently available about how seriously ill the patients in hospital are. Mr Cox said he had collected the figures following conversations with officials at the hospitals in the north and the south of the county.

As recently as this morning, the government's figure for Cumbria was pegged at 22 cases.