Covid-19 in the UK: How many coronavirus cases are there in my area?
By The Visual and Data Journalism Team
BBC News
- Published
There have been more than 5.8 million confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK and nearly 130,000 people have died, government figures show.
However, these figures include only people who have died within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus.
More than 46.8 million people in the UK have now had their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
Find out how the pandemic has affected your area and how it compares with the national average:
Fall in new daily cases
The average number of daily confirmed cases rose sharply in June and early July. It now appears to be falling.
A further 24,470 confirmed cases in the UK were announced on Sunday.
The rise in cases was being driven by the Delta variant, which spreads faster than the previously most common Kent variant (now named Alpha).
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has lifted all legal restrictions in England but he has urged the public to remain cautious, saying the pandemic is not over.
Recent data suggests that the vaccination programme has reduced hospital admissions and deaths, with a fewer than one in 1,000 infections now estimated to result in death - compared with one in 60 during last winter.
Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty has said that while current hospitalisation rates are "not trivial" and are rising, they are "way below" those seen in previous waves.
It is thought the infection rate in the first peak of the virus in spring last year was much higher than was evident from the reported number of cases. Testing capacity was then too limited to detect the true number of daily cases.
The red areas on the map below show the places currently seeing the highest number of cases per 100,000 people.
You can use our postcode look-up to check what the rules are where you live.
Vaccine rollout continuing
More than 46.8 million people - about 88% of all UK adults - have now received a first dose of a vaccine and over 38 million people, or about 72% of all adults, have had a second.
In total, more than 39 million people in England have had one vaccine dose.
In Scotland, four million people have had their first shot, while the figure is about 1.2 million in Northern Ireland. The latest figure for Wales is nearly 2.3 million.
Everyone over the age of 18 across the UK can now book a vaccine.
On Sunday, in a bid to boost vaccine uptake among the young, the government announced companies including Uber, Bolt and Deliveroo will offer discounted takeaways and taxi rides as an incentive for people in England to get their Covid jabs.
England's deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said around 60,000 deaths and around 22 million cases had been prevented as a result of the vaccination programme in England.
Daily deaths now rising
There were 65 deaths within 28 days of a positive test reported on Sunday.
Of those deaths, 52 were in England, five in Northern Ireland, five in Wales and three were in Scotland.
Rules were amended last summer to include deaths in the coronavirus total only if they occurred within 28 days of a positive test. Previously in England, all deaths after a positive test were included.
England has seen the majority of UK deaths from Covid-19. Using the 28-day cut-off, there have been almost 114,000.
Hospital cases rising again
The most recent government figures show at least 5,916 people with coronavirus in hospital in the UK. The previous week it was fewer than 5,100.
Although numbers are rising, they are still far below the peak of nearly 40,000 people back in January.
Patient numbers are rising again in many areas now, albeit at different rates, as the chart below shows.
Patient groups and hospital staff have warned that lives are being put at risk by the huge backlog of treatment left by the pandemic.
In-depth analysis by BBC News found nearly a third of hospitals have seen long waits increase, major disruption to cancer services and a fall in GP referrals and screening services.
Death toll could be above 150,000
When looking at the overall death toll from coronavirus, official figures count deaths in three different ways, each giving a slightly different number.
First, government figures count people who died within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus - and that total is now nearly 130,000.
According to the latest ONS figures, the UK has now seen 153,342 deaths - that's all those deaths where coronavirus was mentioned on the death certificate even if the person had not been tested for the virus.
The third measure counts all deaths over and above the usual number at the time of year - that figure was almost 116,000 to 16 July.
In total, there were 11,053 deaths registered in the week to 16 July, which was 514 more deaths than the five-year average.
Of the total deaths, 268 were related to coronavirus, 51 more than in the previous week.
There have now been more deaths involving Covid than "excess" deaths, which means non-Covid deaths must be below usual levels.
This could be because of a milder flu season - resulting from less travel and more social distancing - and because some people who might have died for other reasons had there been no pandemic, died of Covid.
What is the R number?
The "R number" is the average number of people an infected person will pass the disease on to.
If R is below one, then the number of people contracting the disease will fall; if it is above one, the number will grow.
The government has said in the past that the R number is one of the most important factors in making policy decisions.
The latest R number estimate for England is 1.1 to 1.4, while for Scotland it is 0.8 to 1.0, for Wales it is 1.2 to 1.5 and for Northern Ireland it is 1.2 to 1.6.