COVID-19: UK records another six coronavirus deaths as more than 25 million people receive two vaccine doses – Sky News

The UK has recorded another six coronavirus-related deaths as more than 25 million people have now received two vaccine doses, latest government figures show.

It comes as another 3,240 coronavirus cases were recorded and the latest statistics showed 39,259,168 people have had a first dose of a COVID vaccine.

A total of 25,332,851 have had two jabs.

There have now been a total of 4,484,056 cases and 127,781 deaths throughout the pandemic in the UK.

On Friday, 4,182 cases were reported which was the highest daily total since 1 April - and came on the back of news that coronavirus infections in England are growing by up to 3% every day.

The latest coronavirus R (reproduction) number is estimated to be between 1.0 and 1.1 - up from between 0.9 and 1.1 last week.

This means that, on average, every 10 people infected with COVID will infect between 10 and 11 other people.

The government is now considering making COVID vaccinations compulsory for NHS workers, while an expert has warned there still remains "an awful lot of uncertainty" over whether England can proceed with its planned relaxation of COVID restrictions on 21 June.

Dr Mike Tildesley, from the University of Warwick and a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M) government advisory panel, was asked on LBC if the country was on track to reopen by that date.

He said: "I think at the moment there's quite a lot of uncertainty around that.

"We are starting to see signs of course that cases are going up, but at the moment we're still obviously reporting hospital admissions and deaths at very low levels."

Read this article:

COVID-19: UK records another six coronavirus deaths as more than 25 million people receive two vaccine doses - Sky News