Government has today rolled out a new scheme after a successful trial 90 wastewater treatment sites in England, Wales and Scotland A.

To start testing sewage for traces of the virus to try to detect local outbreaks before they spread.

Here's a health editor, Hugh Pym.

It's a new approach to tracking down coronavirus monitoring sewage in local communities.

This is an early warning system as fragments of genetic material from the virus could be detected in wastewater, scientists say it's really value is in areas where there might be people who are infected but showing no symptoms.

But the beauty of this technique is that weakened Itek people who are in that situation, they don't know they've got the virus, but they're still shedding it.

We can still find it in the waste water when we confined it in advance of there being any positive test in a catchment.

Samples from sewage plants reached labs for testing the next day.

The results were passed on to local health leaders in Plymouth and outbreak was detected despite relatively low numbers of people going for tests.

Data is also shared with national experts at the Joint Biosecurity Center.

The aim is to support the work done by testing trace staff.

But in England, the testing and tracing system has come under intense strain.

Performance figures for time to get results back and tracing of contacts have fallen to their lowest level since the launch in May, though it has had to deal with rapidly rising case numbers.

Perhaps Way wouldn't have seen ourselves in this situation that we're in now.

If that had been a bit, some experts argue that the national system could have Bean better planned and prepared.

I think the intention behind setting up testing trace was, well, well intended and well meaning on actually was there to meet a desperate need that we had at the time.

But perhaps it it wasn't as familiar with the challenge that it faced.

Onder perhaps therefore, does not have the capacity set up to deal with it adequately.

While the national set up can be struggling, local public health teams like here in hard future are taking on more of the tracing work to try to ensure infections don't spread and get out of control.

But we have a call center.

If we don't get through, we could go and knock on doors on.

That, of course, is reassuring for people when they see someone and here's someone, and also then to collect the information that we need That helps us identify locally, perhaps the sort of clusters on where the infection might be spreading that the national information may not be getting sewage monitoring will add to the range of techniques.

Health officials continues at this critical stage in the bid to seek out and control the virus up in BBC News.

The latest government figures show that there were 20,530 new coronavirus infections recorded in the latest 24 hour period.

That's down around 700 on yesterday's figure.

The average number of new cases reported per day in the last week is now 20,250 993 people had been admitted to hospital on average each day over the week till last Friday, 224 deaths were reported.

That's people who died within 28 days of a positive co vid 19 test.

That means on average, in the past week, 163 deaths were announced.

Every day on it takes the total number of deaths so far across the UK to 44,571.

Well, our health editor, Hugh Pym, is here with me and Hugh.

How would you assess the prevalence of the virus now or Rita?

We've had these indications today that the virus numbers might not be expanding quite so rapidly.

First, the our number, the reproduction number, anything above one shows that it's spreading fast.

Anything below one shows it's declining.

It's still above one, but the top end of the estimated range has come down a bit toe one point 0.4.

As we heard, the onus thinks from its survey that infections are not rising quite Aziz rapidly, as they were the previous week, But it's still going up the case numbers and hospitals are still under pressure.

We've had reports today from hospitals in Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool on Birmingham off rising patient numbers with CO Vered 19 and that, of course, reflect cases first diagnosed a couple of weeks ago.

So a lot of uncertainty about where things go from here on attention is focusing more on Christmas after a senior health official in Scotland said yesterday family should be prepared for something very far from normal, maybe a digital Christmas Well today, the prime minister's official spokesman said with regard to England that it was their ambition that families should be able to celebrate at Christmas, if possible.

But soon after, a senior adviser on the sage committee said only radical action, radical action to reduce infections would ensure anything like a normal Christmas.

Okay, you many thanks our health that is a huge him there.