'There will be more to come': Boris Johnson warns as UK sees record Covid deaths

21 January 2021, 07:47 | Updated: 21 January 2021, 08:00

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned "there will be more to come" as the UK recorded its highest number of coronavirus deaths in a single day.

Official figures showed that on January 12 there were 1,110 Covid-19 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 Wednesday, although there is a time lag between a patient dying and appearing in the statistics.

Mr Johnson said the figures were "appalling" and warned "there will be more to come because what we're seeing is the result of the wave of the new variant that we saw just before Christmas on December 18, or thereabouts".

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It comes as the Government's chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance warned parts of the NHS were like a "war zone".

"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 receive a first jab.

Based on the latest figures, an average of 399,625 first doses of vaccine would be needed each day in order to meet the Government's target of 15 million of the highest priority patients receive a jab by February 15 - on Tuesday the total was 343,163.

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In other developments:

- Home Secretary Priti Patel was recorded admitting that the Government "should... have closed our borders earlier" and said she had pushed for that last March.

- Three Birmingham hospitals are to start piloting delivery of 24-hour Covid-19 vaccinations for health and social care staff.

- Covid-19 vaccines may be less effective against the South African coronavirus variant, researchers there warned in a paper which has not yet been peer reviewed.

- The Government's programme to test pupils and staff daily in England's secondary schools and colleges as an alternative to self-isolation will be "paused".

Answering viewers' questions on Sky News, Sir Patrick warned 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.

Sir Patrick said: “The numbers are nowhere near where they need to be at the moment, they need to come down quite a lot further - we need to make sure we stick with it.

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"You go for a walk in the park or something, life looks normal; you go for a walk in a hospital, if you work in a hospital, you will see life not looking normal at all."

He suggested tougher measures could have been needed earlier in the pandemic.

"That is what the evidence says - you've got to go hard, early and broader if you're going to get on top of this. Waiting and watching simply doesn't work," he said.

He said it was hoped that as the vaccine took effect and cases dropped, it would be possible to start a "slow release" of some of the measures.

The Prime Minister insisted the vaccination programme remained "on track" despite "constraints on supply".

He told reporters: "We're going absolutely as fast as we can and it is literally a race against time, a race to protect the elderly and the vulnerable in the context of what is still a very, very tough pandemic.

"There are still tough weeks to come."

UK has highest Covid death rate per million people in world over past seven days

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 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, 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.

"As well as accelerating the delivery of supplies to ready and willing sites across the country, the Government needs to be honest both with the public and practices about what supplies are available."

In a sign the lockdown measures in England are having an impact, analysis shows Covid-19 case rates in two regions are at their lowest level since before Christmas.

In London, the rolling seven-day rate as of January 15 stood at 703.7 cases per 100,000 people - down from 1,053.4 a week earlier, and the lowest since the seven days to December 19.

Eastern England is currently recording a seven-day rate of 526.8, down from 763.5 and the lowest since December 20.

All regions of England are continuing to show a week-on-week fall in seven-day rates, though levels are dropping faster in some areas than others.