For all the latest news from in and around Bolton, sign up for the free MyBolton newsletter Nearly a third of high school students in Bolton were absent from school because of Covid-19 on the worst day for attendances since the latest spike in cases.
Figures show that 31.5 percent of secondary school pupils in the town reported absences on May 27, with a further 21 percent of primary school pupils also off.
In comparison, the average Covid absence rate for the whole of the North West was just four percent, data from the Department for Education shows.
Bolton has been experiencing a huge spike in coronavirus cases since late April, driven by the Delta variant. This train of the virus was initially discovered in India, and is more