Iran Press/ Europe: There have been at least 4,013,700 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United Kingdom, according to Public Health England.
As of Friday afternoon, 116,287 people had died. Due to a data entry error, nearly 16,000 people who tested positive between Sept. 25 and Oct. 2 were not recorded in the daily number of reported cases.
The Office for National Statistics also produces a weekly report on the number of deaths registered in Britain that mention Covid-19 on a death certificate. This figure, which includes deaths outside of hospitals, is many thousands of deaths higher than the reported daily death toll. Britain has the highest number of Covid-19 deaths in Europe.
On January 4, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced another national lockdown in England, closing schools and asking Britons to stay home for all but a few necessary purposes, including essential work and buying food and medicine. This is the country’s third national lockdown and will remain in place until at least mid-February, officials said.
The lockdown was imposed in response to a fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus that has overwhelmed Britain’s hospitals. Wales and Scotland also implemented their own national lockdowns, and in Northern Ireland, a stay-at-home order went into effect on Jan. 8.
Britain became the first country to grant emergency authorization to the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, after issuing the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in early December. The nation accelerated vaccination efforts in January by adding a third vaccine by Moderna to its roster.
As of late January, more than five million people in Britain have now received their first dose of the vaccine, mostly healthcare workers and the elderly. Government officials have said they plan to distribute two million weekly doses going forward.
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