A medical team assists a patient in an ambulance outside the Royal London hospital. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images
A quarter of deaths registered in England and Wales in the week before Christmas were Covid related, the highest weekly proportion since mid-May.
Of a total of 11,520 deaths registered across England and Wales in the week to 25 December, 2,912 (25.3%) mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate.
This brings the total number of Covid-related deaths in the UK to 92,070, as of 5 January.
The figure is higher than the government’s official toll of 76,305, which only includes those deaths that occurred within 28 days of a first positive test. The higher figure includes all deaths recorded by the three statistical agencies to date plus those reported on the government dashboard since each agency last reported.
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New funding for innovative space tech to help solve problems on Earth
Through the UK Space Agency, the government is giving a cash injection to 5 projects specifically designed to bring together UK business expertise with universities to help build space solutions to global problems, on UK soil.
One of the projects, involving the University of Southampton, will use artificial intelligence to automatically detect buried archaeological remains on satellite imagery, providing construction companies with higher accuracy at an earlier stage. This will save them time and money during the planning permission process and help them to reduce their carbon footprint.
The Office of National Statistics have claimed that 2% of the population had Covid-19 in the few days after Christmas, with an even higher percentage in London. a Image - PA Media An estimated 1.1 million people in private households in England had Covid-19 between December 27 and January 2, according to new figures which scientists have described as frighteningly high . This is the equivalent of around 2.06% of the population, or one in 50 people, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. The number in London was even higher, with an estimated one in 30 people in private households having Covid-19 between December 27 and January 2. This comes as the number of daily confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK topped 60,000 for the first time.