Premiership's Covid-19 cases fall again as Saints get set to reopen training ground

And the news for the Premiership is now improved as Wednesday's announcement revealed Covid-19 cases in the league had fallen for the second successive week.

A total of 18 people - 13 of whom were players and five of whom were members of staff - across nine different clubs tested positive, a reduction of one from last week's results.

Last week saw a big fall from 33 positive cases to 19.

Saints were part of last week's figures as they had an outbreak at Franklin's Gardens, forcing the cancellation of the Premiership fixture against Leicester Tigers.

It meant they had to close their training ground at the Gardens, but CEO Mark Darbon says it could be reopened as soon as tomorrow.

Darbon said: "We've had some of the squad and a couple of members of staff who have had the virus, but most importantly they're all doing well and on the road to recovery.

"As a result, we've had the training ground closed and as of today (Wednesday) we're still closed so the plan is to continue to manage that challenge.

"We're hoping the squad will be back in and training from tomorrow or Friday and because we've not had as much training as we'd have liked this next block is a big training period for us.

"We've got a big game against Gloucester next up in the Premiership (on January 30) so while the schedules all look slightly different, as soon as we're allowed to reopen the training ground we'll be back up and running and looking ahead to the Premiership games."