BURNLEY Council leader Mark Townsend has urged residents to “keep fighting” against coronavirus with the number of cases in the borough rising again.

He said that the town can only return to normality by following official guidelines and that failure to do so could see a stricter lockdown come into force.

This comes with the second national lockdown, due to be eased on December 2.

Cllr Townsend said: “The second national lockdown period is coming to an end in a couple of weeks and we’ve got Christmas coming up.

“After a few weeks of seeing cases drop we’re now seeing a slight increase in numbers again.”

He added: “The only way of getting things anywhere back to something like normal more quickly is by getting the number of infections down and that can only be done by us all following the rules.

“We have to keep following the guidelines and keep ourselves and others safe in order to ease the burden on the local NHS system,” he added.