The Government said 41,403 people had died in the UK within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of 5pm on Wednesday, an increase of six on the day before.
Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies show there have now been 57,000 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.
The Government also said that as of 9am on Thursday, there had been a further 1,182 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus. Overall, 322,280 cases have been confirmed.
– Second wave and ‘really bumpy’ winter ahead, top academic warns
“My bet is that we will get a second wave, and the vaccines won’t get here in time to stop the second wave,” Professor Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, told a Royal Society of Medicine webinar.
“And I’m not sure the new home testing is going to get there in time either, but it perhaps will take the edge off it. But then I suspect by Christmas or early in the new year, there may be more than one option for vaccines.
“My suspicion is the vaccines will work a bit, they won’t sterilise people, but they’ll take the edge off the disease, and they’ll definitely be worth using in a population.
“But they won’t… they’re not going to solve this problem. And by the way, the rest of the world is still going to have Covid going through the winter … but just to be crystal clear, it’s going to be a bumpy winter. There’s nothing I can see that’s going to make this an easy winter.”
