UK has record 56,000 Covid cases on last day of 2020
The UK has recorded 964 deaths from Covid on the last day of 2020 as cases continue to surge to record levels across the country.
The government reported another 55,892 new Covid cases today – a new single day record for the country.
The total number of UK deaths from coronavirus has now hit 73,512, which is the sixth highest total in the world and the second highest total in Europe.
There have been 14,959 Covid-related hospitalisations in the past seven days, which is a weekly increase of 19.4 per cent.
The government put three-quarters of the country into lockdown yesterday, with Boris Johnson saying yesterday the country needed to “redouble our efforts to contain the virus”.
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“No one regrets these measures more bitterly than I do, but we must take firm action now,” he said.
The Department of Health also reported today that 944,539 people in the UK have now received the first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine.
This number is expected to shoot up drastically over the next week, after the UK’s medicines regulator approved the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine.
There are already millions of doses of AstraZeneca jab ready to administer in the UK and it is far easier to transport and store as it does not need to be kept at -70 degrees like the Pfizer vaccine.
Health secretary Matt Hancock wants the country soon to be vaccinating 2m people a week.