THE Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole area is currently one of the few ‘hotspots’ in the country with a probability of recording more than 500 Covid cases per week.

According to an interactive map on the Imperial College London website, there is currently an 86 per cent chance of the conurbation recording cases over the highest threshold per 100,000 people.

Other areas within this category are Eastbourne, Birmingham, South Staffordshire and Burnley.

However, the number of infections is expected to drop in the BCP area in the coming days with this dropping to an 87 per cent chance of recording more than 300 cases.

And by early February, this will fall further to an 84 per cent chance of exceeding more than 200 cases per week.

The map currently predicts what might happen up until February 7, by which point the country will have been under lockdown for more than a month.

The map rates each authority area in terms of its probability of recording more than 50, 100, 200, 300 or 500 cases per week.

Areas with a probably of recording between 75 and 100 per cent of more than 500 cases appear coloured purple on the map.

Dorset has a 93 per cent chance of recording more than 200 cases per week which will drop to 60 per cent by the end of the current projections.

Imperial College London says: “In the map, we show the probability of an area being a hotspot in the next one, two and three weeks. The projections for hotspot assume no change in interventions and human behaviour since a week before the last observed data.”

To view the map visit https://imperialcollegelondon.github.io/covid19local/#map