UK coronavirus cases surge by a record 35,928 as deaths double in just a week

The UK has suffered its highest ever daily increase in coronavirus cases, with 35,928 new infections recorded today.

A further 326 deaths were also announced today - more than double the 144 declared last Sunday.

Usually the number of deaths announced by the Department of Health is lower on a Sunday, due to a lag in reporting.

It comes after 534 deaths and another 27,052 cases were reported yesterday.

The second biggest increase in coronavirus cases on record took place on Thursday, when 35,383 new infections were announced.

However, this included 11,000 additional cases that were previously unreported due to system maintenance in Wales.

The coronavirus situation in the UK has got significantly worse in the past several weeks.

In a seven day period last week 173,263 new cases were reported across the UK.

That is an increase of 38% compared to the week before.

Yesterday Boris Johnson attributed the spike in infections to a mutated form of the coronavirus.

The Prime Minister announced new lockdown measures to tackle the rising case rates, including shutting non-essential shops in Tier 4 areas.

Today Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he was "really worried" about the NHS which was now treating almost as many hospital patients with the disease as it was at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in April.

"The new variant is out of control and we need to bring it under control," he told BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show.

"We don't know how long these measures are going to be in place. It may be for some time until we can get the vaccine going."

He said that more measures were needed to control the new variant than were required for the original coronavirus.

"We know with this new variant you can catch it more easily from a small amount of the virus being present," he told Sky News's Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme.

"We know that because we know that in November that in the areas where this new variant started, in Kent, the cases carried on rising whereas in the rest of the country the November lockdown worked very effectively.

"It is an enormous challenge, until we can get the vaccine rolled out to protect people. This is what we face over the next couple of months."

Mr Hancock insisted they had acted "very quickly and decisively" after ministers were told on Friday by scientists on the Government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) that the VUI 202012/01 strain was spreading more quickly.

However, Sir Keir Starmer said the alarm bells had been "ringing for weeks" but that Mr Johnson - who said on Wednesday that it would be "inhuman" to cancel Christmas - had repeatedly failed to act.

"It is an act of gross negligence by a Prime Minister who, once again, has been caught behind the curve," the Labour leader said.

"At the heart of the problem here is a Prime Minister who simply doesn't want to be unpopular and therefore won't take the tough decisions that are necessary until he is forced into them at the 11th hour.

"We can't go on like that. I think that it is very important that the Prime Minister does apologise to people for his handling of this episode of the pandemic."