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LONDON:
Britain reported 41,385 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday, a daily record as a rapidly spreading variant of the coronavirus increases infection rates and the holiday weekend impacted the notification of some new ones case.
There were 357 new deaths within 28 days of a positive test, according to the government portal for coronavirus statistics.
“This very high level of infection is of growing concern at a time when our hospitals are most vulnerable,” said Yvonne Doyle, Medical Director of Public Health England.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his scientific advisers have said that a variant of the coronavirus, which could be up to 70% more transmissible, is spreading rapidly in Britain, although it is not considered more deadly or for cause more serious illness.
This has resulted in strict social mixing restriction measures for London and the south-east of England, while plans to ease Christmas restrictions across the country have been drastically reduced or abandoned altogether.
Johnson said last week that the spread of a new variant of the coronavirus would mean there would be tough times ahead, and ministers said more may need to be done.
The increase in positive cases was also in part due to Northern Ireland reporting 1,634 new cases, not reporting any cases on Sunday or Friday due to the Christmas holiday period.
It was not clear whether an increase of nearly 11,000 cases in England was in part the result of fluctuations in testing numbers over the holiday weekend, as data on the number of people tested was not published since Wednesday.
Britain has dramatically increased its testing capacity since the first wave of Covid-19 in the spring, from around 100,000 daily tests at the end of May to 500,000 tests on December 23, when the latest data was released on the number of tests performed .
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