The Government has unveiled more details on the areas in England where secondary school and college students will receive coronavirus testing.
Staff, students and families in secondary schools and colleges in parts of north-east London, south Essex and Kent are being urged to get tested.
The London boroughs receiving additional testing are: Barking and Dagenham; Hackney and the City; Havering; Newham; Redbridge; Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest.
The Essex boroughs included are Southend; Basildon; Basildon; Canvey Island; Harlow; Brentwood and Harlow.
In Kent, an additional two mobile testing units will be deployed on Saturday, with a further 10 MTUs arriving later in the weekend.
– Cases are going up, warns Sage member
Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter said: “The downward trend that happened after the higher tiers and lockdown has now stopped, cases are going up.
“(There are) 350, 400 deaths a day in the UK – that’s about 10,000 a month. And these are real deaths. These are extra deaths that would not have happened normally. They are from Covid, they are not just with Covid.”
On Thursday, the UK recorded 20,964 more Covid-19 cases – a rise of 4,386 compared with Wednesday’s figure of 16,578.
It was the highest daily increase since mid-November and brings the total number of infections during the pandemic to 1,787,783.
