With schools set to start reopening across London from Monday, covid-19 infection rates across southeast London have continued to fall in every borough.

Despite new cases of the highly infectious South African variant being discovered in the New Addington area further to the west, lockdown measures continue to reduce the number of cases where the virus has been transmitted.

This continues a trend seen in recent weeks as the third national lockdown helps to reduce the amount of direct contact between people.

Data for the most recent four days (March 1-4) has been excluded as it is incomplete and does not reflect the true number of cases.

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The rate is expressed as the number of new cases per 100,000 people.

Over in north Kent – Dartford continues to have a slightly higher rate of infection than its southeast London neighbours – currently at 61.3 cases per 100,000 people (69 new cases) down from a rate of 76.4 last week (86 new cases).

In southeast London specifically, Bexley marginally has the highest rate at 47.5 (118 new cases) compared to 76.5 last week (190 new cases).

It was closely followed by Greenwich, which has a recorded rate of 47.2 (136 new cases) compared to 67.7 (195 new cases) the previous week.

Bromley follows after with a rate of 37.9 (126 new cases), down from 54.5 (181 new cases) the previous week.

Lewisham’s rate is 34.3 based on 105 new cases (down from 47.7 and 146 new cases), with Southwark currently holding the lowest infection rate of 33.6 (107 new cases), down from 57.4 (183 new cases) the previous week.

The list has been calculated based on Public Health England data published on March 4 on the Government’s coronavirus dashboard.