UK records deadliest day of the coronavirus pandemic

THE UK has recorded its deadliest day in the coronavirus pandemic, as the UK Government’s chief scientific adviser warned parts of the NHS were like a “war zone”.

Official figures showed that January 12 saw the highest number of deaths recorded on a single day – with 1,110 Covid19 fatalities, eclipsing the previous peak of 1,073 on April 8, 2020.

A record 1,820 further deaths within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 were reported as of yesterday, although there is a time lag between a patient dying and appearing in the statistics.

The grim figures appeared as Sir Patrick Vallance gave a stark warning about the strain the pandemic was putting on hospitals.

“This is very, very bad at the moment, with enormous pressure, and in some cases it looks like a war zone in terms of the things that people are having to deal with,” he said.

But there was “light at the end of the tunnel” in the form of the vaccination programme, which has so far seen 4,609,740 people in the UK receive a first jab.

Answering viewers’ questions on Sky News, Sir Patrick warned that vaccines were not doing enough of the “heavy lifting” at the moment to consider easing lockdown restrictions, with case rates needing to decline further before ministers could consider relaxing the measures.

“The advice at the moment is vaccines are not going to do the heavy lifting for us at the moment, anywhere near it,” Sir Patrick said. “This is about, I’m afraid, the restrictive measures which we’re all living under and carrying on with those.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted the vaccination programme remained “on track” despite “constraints on supply”.

Pfizer has said it is reducing deliveries for the next three to four weeks while it makes improvements to its factory in Belgium, while AstraZeneca expects to scale up to two million doses per week before or by mid-February.

The British Medical Association (BMA) criticised the Government over a lack of transparency around vaccine supply, which is impacting the speed at which jabs are rolled out.

In a statement y, GP committee chairman Dr Richard Vautrey said: “Despite having the staff and resources available, some GP-led sites are not able to vaccinate patients at the rate at which they could if they had continued access to the vaccine.”