Credit: Alberto Pezzali/NurPhoto/PA Images

The government has launched an online tracker to allow the public to track the spread of the coronavirus outbreak.

Public Health England has created the tool, which includes both daily and cumulative figures of total UK confirmed cases of Covid-19. Figures are broken down by country, and then further divided by local authority area and NHS region.

This information is visualised on an interactive map, allowing citizens to see which parts of the country are most and least affected, and how many infections have been reported in their local area.

The tracker also contains daily updates on the running total of fatalities.

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A graph showing the number of daily confirmed cases illustrates the spread of the virus in the last two weeks. 

After the first two UK cases were reported on 31 January, there were no further cases confirmed on 22 out of the following 27 days – including 10 days in a row, between 13 and 24 February.

The last day on which no new cases were reported was 27 February, at which point the running total of infections stood at 13.  

There have been at least a handful of new confirmed cases each day since then and, for the last week, the daily tally has not been lower than 29. 

Some 382 people across the UK have thus far tested positive for coronavirus, of whom eight are reported to have died.

The online tracker tool brings together data on confirmed Covid-19 cases reported to PHE, and matches it against ONS and NHS data on administrative regions of the country.

Public Health England is an arm’s-length agency of the Department of Health and Social Care. Its remit is “to protect and improve the nation’s health and wellbeing, and reduce health inequalities”.