Richmond’s council leader has said it is “absolutely vital” residents follow social distancing rules, after the latest data shows what is thought to have been the largest single week’s increase in the borough’s coronavirus cases seen so far.

Councillor Gareth Roberts posted a video on the council’s Twitter page this morning warning about the “concerning rise”.

He referred to the Evening Standard’s report this morning (October 5), which showed more than 130 new cases were identified in the borough over the last seven days.

This became apparent after it emerged a technical glitch meant almost 16,000 cases went unreported nationwide.

Hundreds of cases in London are believed to be among the 15,841 between September 25 and October 2 which were not reported on the government’s daily dashboard

Cllr Roberts said “it is absolutely vital we all follow the rules” to avoid spreading the virus and going into a local lockdown.

He said: “Of course we want to ensure that we don’t go into local lockdown. But what we have to be aware of is that the mood music coming out of London is that if one area of London goes into local lockdown, we all go into local lockdown. We need to avoid that if at all possible.”

He added: “If you’re one of those people who think that these rules don’t apply to you, that you can go about your business as you have always done, now you may not care about your own health, you may not care about your own job, but you are putting other people’s health at risk, you are putting other people’s jobs at risk. So please pack it in!

“It is absolutely vital that we all follow these rules because the increase of cases that we have seen over the last seven days is something that should be concerning all of us.”