Yahoo News The UK’s 6 COVID hotspots as daily deaths hit highest since March
Watch: Tuesday's coronavirus in numbers
The UK has recorded its highest coronavirus death toll in five months.
A further 146 deaths were reported on Tuesday, the highest number in a day since 12 March, when 175 were reported.
The latest government data suggest a pattern of slowly increasing COVID-19 deaths: 622 have been recorded in the past week, up 15% on the previous seven days. The third wave death rates remain nowhere near the numbers seen at the peak of the first and second waves.
There has also been a slight increase in week-on-week infections: 196,047 were reported in the past seven days, up 7%.
Meanwhile, there are six areas with case rates of more than 500 per 100,000 people. In the week up to 5 August, the latest date for which figures are available, those areas were:
Lincoln: 647.7 per 100,000
Exeter: 583.5
Kingston upon Hull: 560.3
Mid Ulster: 541.8
Derry City and Strabane: 520.8
Belfast: 518.2
It comes as health secretary Sajid Javid confirmed preparations are under way to offer COVID booster jabs in the UK from next month.
Javid said the government is awaiting advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) but indicated the plan is likely to be for over-50s to be offered a booster vaccine at the same time as a flu jab.
He said those who got their jabs when the vaccine rollout began in December last year will be prioritised.
Speaking during a visit to a hospital in Milton Keynes on Tuesday, he said: “When it comes to booster jabs we are waiting for the final advice from JCVI... and when we get that advice we will be able to start the booster programme, but I anticipate it will begin in early September, so I’m already making plans for that.”
Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, who played a key role in developing the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, earlier said any waning of protection provided by the vaccines would be “gradual” and picked up on quickly through UK surveillance systems, adding “there isn’t any reason at this moment to panic”.
He also told the All Party Parliamentary Group on coronavirus that the idea of herd immunity – when enough people are resistant to a disease through vaccination or exposure that it can no longer significantly spread – is “mythical” and that the vaccine programme should not be built around the idea of achieving it.
Read more:
'It's mythical': COVID jab will never result in herd immunity, warns UK's top vaccine boss
What is a ‘heat dome’? Understanding the weather pattern causing record temperatures this summer
He said: “We know very clearly with coronavirus that this current variant, the Delta variant, will still infect people who have been vaccinated and that does mean that anyone who’s still unvaccinated, at some point, will meet the virus.”
Top government advisers were on record at the start of the pandemic talking about herd immunity.
The Department of Health, meanwhile, has said three-quarters of adults in the UK have now received both doses of the jab, something hailed by Boris Johnson as a “huge national achievement”.
Watch: Charity boss discusses disabled football fans' coronavirus concerns
