CHRISTCHURCH has the worst percentage of people with coronavirus symptoms across the BCP Council area, a new app has suggested.

An app called Covid Symptom Tracker has been designed by researchers to study symptoms of Covid-19 and track how fast it is spreading.

They hope it can be used to better understand symptoms of Covid-19, understand how fast the virus is spreading in certain areas, identify high risk areas in the country and identify who is most at risk by better understanding symptoms linked to health conditions.

The app relies on people contributing and adding their symptoms and more than two million people across the UK have done so.

726 people have contributed in Christchurch, with 3.08 per cent have showed or are showing symptomatic coronavirus.

This is the worst percentage in the BCP Council area and is beaten only by Weymouth and Portland in the whole of the county, which has a percentage of 4.86 per cent from 879 contributions.

In Bournemouth, 2806 people have contributed and 2.96 per cent of them have or have had symptomatic coronavirus.

Poole has similar figures. 2681 people have contributed and 2.86 per cent have or have had symptomatic coronavirus.

In East Dorset, 1.99 per cent of 1509 contributions have had symptoms and in the New Forest, 2.47 per cent of 3094 people have symptomatic coronavirus.

Leading the research for the not-for-profit app is Dr Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London.

Dr Spector said the research shows the rate of new symptoms being reported nationally has slowed ‘significantly’ in the past few days.

However, it is worth remembering that the research relies on people contributing data, which not everyone has done.

The latest figures estimate that 1.4 million people in the UK aged 20-69 have symptomatic Covid-19, a fall from 1.9 million on April 1.

A report done by the researchers states that the drop in new symptoms indicates that although the number of hospital admissions and deaths from Covid-19 are currently rising, they should start to fall in about two weeks provided social distancing continues.

Dr Spector said: “It is really encouraging to see that the rate of new symptoms being reported is beginning to fall.

“We hope that these figures offer a much needed light at the end of the tunnel.”