THE vast majority of people in Herefordshire are obeying government restrictions to stay at home during the coronavirus outbreak, new data suggests.

The users of the Evergreen Life health app provided over 50,000 responses to questions about coronavirus behaviour and the national response to Government guidelines.

In Herefordshire, it found that up until Monday, April 6, 91 per cent of people were staying at home. The data also showed that 8 per cent of households had someone with coronavirus symptoms.

Two of the places in the UK where people are most likely to stay at home are Adur and Arun, in West Sussex, each on 98 per cent.

The highest number of respondents saying they were not staying at home was 25 per cent in Middlesbrough.

The anonymised data, which excludes key workers, is being shared with leading universities and to help the NHS.

Data scientists from institutions including the Universities of Liverpool and Manchester are working with Evergreen Life to analyse the results gained from users of its NHS-assured app to help feed this into the national planning and coordination efforts.

Dr Ian Hall of the University of Manchester said: "Evergreen Life users are supporting a better understanding of the local experience of Covid-19 disease through sharing their data which will be incredibly useful to national and local planning.

"This is an exciting emerging data stream and I look forward to helping interpret the data, with colleagues in Manchester and Liverpool, as it provides situational awareness to users and policy makers alike."

The health app was launched in 2015 in partnership with the NHS so users could have access to all their health records and input their own fitness and wellbeing data to have all the information in one place, and now has 750,000 users.

Evergreen Life CEO Stephen Critchlow says: "We've asked our 750,000 users to help build a heat map of those with symptoms of Covid-19 to help the NHS and researchers better understand how the virus is moving and spreading around the UK."