LONDON (Reuters) – The United Kingdom on Wednesday recorded its second highest daily death toll from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic as the government battled to speed up vaccination delivery.
With a highly transmissible new variant of the virus surging across the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has shuttered the economy and is rushing out vaccines faster than the country’s European neighbours in a bid to stem the pandemic.
The United Kingdom has the world’s fifth-highest official death toll from COVID-19 and reported a further 1,725 fatalities within 28 days of a positive test.
Britain has been hit hard by the latest wave of the pandemic, with deaths routinely above 1,000 people a day and hitting a record 1,820 on Jan. 20.
On Tuesday the total deaths figure passed the 100,000 mark, the first European state to reach that figure, leading to questions about the government’s handling of the crisis.
It rose to 101,887 on Wednesday.
The country recorded a further 25,308 cases of the disease on Wednesday, up from 20,089 the day before.
However, the vaccine roll out has begun well. The data showed that 7,164,387 people have now been given their first dose of the vaccine, with 311,060 receiving it in the last 24 hours.
(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill, writing by James Davey)
