Delta variant: UK registered highest number of new cases in four months | Over 18,000 covid-19 infections in the last 24 hours

British health authorities have confirmed more than 18,000 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours, an unprecedented figure since the end of February. In addition, they recorded more than twenty new deaths in one day, against the backdrop of a new rebound due to the appearance of the Delta variant, identified for the first time in India.

That’s about 18,270 new infections and 23 deaths, above 10,321 cases and 14 deaths last Saturday.

The UK is leading an accelerated vaccination campaign. Of the more than 66.65 million people, a total of 44 million have received at least one dose of the vaccine, while 32 million have already accepted the full schedule.

This weekend the “Grab a Jab” (“Take an injection”) initiative takes place with long queues in large spaces such as the Emirates Stadium and the stadium of London football club Arsenal. The country’s health services accelerated the distribution of vaccines before the lifting of the government all remaining coronavirus restrictions on July 19.

Since the start of the pandemic, the total number of infections in the country reached 4.7 million, while the number of deaths from the disease is 128,083, according to data from the Ministry of Health.

Scandal at the Ministry of Health

UK Health Minister Matt Hancock, resigned from his post after a media scandal: some images have leaked in which he appeared to have an extramarital affair, which also went against the health restrictions linked to the pandemic.

The images, in which Hankcock can be seen hugging his assistant Gina Coladangelo on May 6, they were captured by a security camera and published by The Sun. It was the start of a scandal that ended on Saturday with the resignation of the minister, one of the UK government’s best-known faces in the fight against the pandemic.

Coladangelo, a friend of Hancock University and a millionaire lobbyist, is a non-executive director of the Department of Health and Welfare. She was hired by Hancock himself as an assistant in 2020. Former Johnson collaborator Dominic Cummings said he urged the PM – up to 20 times – to fire him for lying on nursing homes, coronavirus testing or details in response to the pandemic.

Hancock had already apologized on Friday for “violating the rules of physical distancing” in the context of the pandemic of Covid-19 with his assistant, but until then he had ruled out the possibility of resigning.

It will now be up to the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs to investigate not only the route of the leak, but also why there was a security camera that the minister himself was unaware of. existence.

“We have to get to the bottom of this,” Northern Ireland Minister Brandon Lewis told Sky News in comments. “An internal investigation will be necessary,” he added. Former Health Minister and Chairman of the House of Commons Health Committee Jeremy Hunt told local media he found it totally unacceptable that ministers were being taped into his office without his knowledge.“Our intelligence agencies are going to have to study this issue very, very carefully.”, he assured.