United Kingdom hits grim record of 1 564 daily COVID-19 deaths

The United Kingdom on Wednesday recorded 1,564 deaths from COVID-19, the highest ever daily toll.

There have now been nearly 85,000 deaths in Britain - the fifth highest figure globally - and 3.2 million have tested positive for COVID-19.

According to the government's coronavirus dashboard, 47,525 new COVID cases have been recorded and the country now has a total of 3,211,576 confirmed cases and 1,406,967 recoveries.

The National Health Commission said in a statement that a total of 115 new confirmed cases were reported in the mainland compared with 55 a day earlier.

Leatherhead - British authorities have had to set up temporary morgues in some areas after local hospital mortuaries ran out of space due to a surge in deaths caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

However, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said there were about 32,000 COVID-19 patients in hospitals, about 70% more than during the peak of the first outbreak last April, and he said the risk of intensive care units being overwhelmed was substantial. "We are taking steps to do that in respect of the Brazilian variant", he said.

He said that the process of protecting people from coronavirus is already going "exceptionally fast" - but "at the moment the limit is on supply" of the vaccine.

More than 2.6 million people have received their first dose up to and including 12 January.

- 7,074 were in Scotland up to January 10, according to the National Records of Scotland. Look at case numbers and they seem to be falling - or at the very least plateauing (it will take a few more days to be sure of the trend). But it might mean that the overall picture for mortality starts to improve towards the end of the month.