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Local officials in Rochdale will hold a meeting on Friday to decide whether current measures, already stricter than the rest of England, will be tightened as coronavirus cases continue to surge in the Manchester town. Rochdale Borough Council will meet on Friday to discuss extending current restrictions in the town, where residents are urged to maintain two-metre social distancing rules, in comparison to one-metre, as figures suggest COVID-19 cases remain nearly as high as in Spain.

It comes after organisers of the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha are said to have persuaded health officials to enforce tighter lockdown measures amid fears of a local lockdown, according to the Sun.

A source said: “It ‘s very unlikely we’re going to drop the measures because we’ve got Eid this weekend. We’ll either extend them or add one or two things.”

Residents in Rochdale already face tougher restrictions than the rest of England and are only permitted to have two visitors in their home and they urged to wear face masks at all times, not just in enclosed spaces.

A Downing Street source said: “This is the new normal.”

Rochdale was the second town in north-west England to bring in tougher measures to avoid a local lockdown. 

Andrea Fallon, Rochdale borough council’s public health director, previously said: “The fight against coronavirus is not over. Although lockdown measures are being relaxed across the country, we can see from our local data that we need to remain vigilant to the threat posed by the disease.

“We have increased testing and that has shown us that we need to take action and ask everyone to help keep our infection rate down.”

Leicester is still in lockdown following a spike in cases and has been joined by a number of former mill towns and cities in northern England, suffering increased outbreak numbers.

Blackburn and Pendle in Lancashire, Oldham and Rochdale in Greater Manchester and Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees and Rotherham in Yorkshire are now on a Public Health England (PHE) Watchlist – alongside Luton, Northampton and Peterborough in the south and midlands.

It comes after Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he was worried about a second wave of coronavirus infections in Europe and that the government would not hesitate to act to bring back quarantine measures if necessary to keep Britain safe.

Britain last week re-imposed a 14-day quarantine period on people arriving from Spain. Some other European countries which are currently exempt from the British quarantine measures have seen infections rise, Hancock said, without naming them.

He told Sky News this morning: “I am worried about a second wave. I think you can see a second wave starting to roll across Europe, and we’ve got to do everything we can to prevent it from reaching these shores, and to tackle it.

“We have significant concerns about the second wave that is coming across Europe. And it’s not just Spain … but there are other countries too where the number of cases is rising.

“And we are absolutely determined to do everything that we can to keep this country safe.” 

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