UK records another 215,001 Covid-19 cases and 217 deaths as hospitalisations keep rising

The number of cases in the latest update is the second highest since the pandemic began. However figures are Monday are usually much higher than any other weekday as they now include positive tests confirmed over the weekend.

The figures show the number of hospital patients with the virus has risen again, reaching 17,685 on Friday. It means a run of daily rises in hospitalisations is continuing, and has now stretched back more than three weeks to March 5, when the figure was 1,0867.

Last Monday (March 21) saw the highest number of daily cases ever posted by the UK, with 226,524 confirmed infections.

The latest deaths figure brings the country’s official death toll to 164,671.

In London, another 60,810 cases were confirmed, meaning the capital’s seven-day rolling infection rate is currently 675.5 per 100,000 population – the lowest of any region in England.

Earlier on Monday, official figures showed the number of coronavirus patients in Scotland’s hospitals has reached another record high – for the sixth time in the past eight days.

Data from the Scottish Government showed that on Sunday there were 2,360 people with recently confirmed Covid-19 in hospital, the highest number since the start of the pandemic.

Meanwhile new figures show fewer than half of immunocompromised people in England have had a Covid-19 vaccine booster dose.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) announced in November that immunocompromised people – the group the NHS call severely immunosuppressed – who have weakened immune systems should have a booster dose three months after their third primary dose.

But NHS England figures show that 255,422 of the 561,356 immunocompromised people in England had had a booster by March 24.

And a freedom of information request from the charity Blood Cancer UK, submitted before the latest NHS data was released, also found a racial disparity among immunocompromised people to have had the fourth dose.

Those figures, not included in the latest NHS data, show that as of February 6, 17 per cent of white British immunocompromised people had had a booster.

This compared to 2 per cent of those who are immunocompromised from a Bangladeshi background, 3 per cent of those from a Pakistani background, 3 per cent of those from a black African background, 4 per cent from a black Caribbean background and 9 per cent from an Indian background.