Norwich recorded the biggest rise in coronavirus rates in the country last week, as several areas of the city saw surges in infections.

Bucking the downward trend in infections seen across the rest of the county, the city’s infection rate ballooned from 519 to 659 cases per 100,000 people in the week leading up to January 13 – a rise of 27pc in a week.

The city’s infection rate grew faster than anywhere else in England, with the next highest rise in infection rates in Preston.

Mansfield in Nottinghamshire made up the three biggest rises in England.

Locally, the highest rate of infection in the city is in the Heartsease and Piling Park area of the city, where the rate reached 1,352 per 100,000 people in the week leading up to January 12 – a rise of 175.5pc on the week before.

An outbreak at HMP Norwich is thought to be behind the high rate there, with up to 200 of the 750 inmates thought to have caught the virus.

A Prison Service spokesman previously told this paper that measures were in place to limit the spread.

Elsewhere in the city, local infection rates in the Bowthorpe and West Earlham area of the city also more than doubled the week leading up to January 12, reaching 904.3 per 100,000.

The rate of infections also more than doubled in the Catton Grove and Airport area, reaching 931.1.

Elsewhere in Norfolk rates are falling in all other local authority areas.

The lowest rate of infections was found in North Norfolk, where 287.1 per 100,00 was recorded in the week leading up to January 13 – 23.4pc less than the week before.

Infections in Yarmouth had also fallen in the week leading up to January 12, bringing the area’s rate down by 12.6pc to 521.5 per 100,000.

In Broadland and Breckland rates were down 9.1pc and 1pc respectively to 513.8 and 507.3 per 100,000 people, while South Norfolk saw rates fall by 12.9pc to 363.4.

And in Kings Lynn and West Norfolk, rates fell by 106pc to 413.5 per 100,000.