Coronavirus has claimed the lives of 529 more people in the UK. The country's death toll now stands at 53,274. Another 19,609 people have tested positive for the bug, bringing the total number of confirmed infected to 1,430,341 since the pandemic began.
By way of comparison, last Wednesday 595 people died, compared to 492 the week before that. Yesterday the death toll rose by 598 and the number of daily confirmed cases by 20,051.
That represented the highest number of deaths since May. The news comes as the number of deaths in England and Wales with Covid-19 on the death certificate soared by 40% in just a week, new figures show.