Daily Covid have fallen by a fifth, but deaths have risen 40 per cent on last week, official figures show.
The Department of Health posted another 32,322 infections today, down 19.4 per cent last Monday. Meanwhile, 57 people died within 28 days of testing positive, a week-on-week jump of 42.5 per cent.
The figure lags a few weeks behind infection numbers due to the time it takes for someone to become seriously unwell after catching the virus.
Health bosses did not release any hospitalisation figures today. But NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard came under fire for suggesting 14 times as many Covid-infected Britons were in hospital compared to last year, when the figure is actually lower.
And the Prime Minister urged people to come forward for their booster jabs — are a key part of ministers plans to avoid restrictions over the coming months — warning 'too many' elderly double-jabbed Britons are being hospitalised.
The group — who were the first to receive the vaccine last winter — now have less protection, because vaccine effectiveness drops after six months.
Some 10.3million boosters have been dished out so far, with 209,885 people coming forward yesterday. But only around four in 10 of those eligible have been triple-jabbed.
A prominent Government adviser today suggested boosters could be needed every winter.
And former vaccine tsar Nadhim Zahawi also hinted the jabs will be needed annually, as the virus moves to the background and the UK enters an endemic.
And one of the Government's pandemic advisers claimed No10 was a 'long way away' from having to consider a winter lockdown based on the current promising data, despite Boris Johnson facing calls to act tougher and resort to his Plan B strategy of face masks and WFH guidance.
Department for Health data showed 24,979 cases were recorded in England and 2,012 were registered in Scotland, while 4,303 people tested positive in Wales and 1,028 were confirmed in Northern Ireland.
The most recent peak in infections was recorded on October 21, when 52,009 positive cases were reported. Some 9.3million positive tests have been registered across the UK since the pandemic began.
But the real infection number is many millions higher, due to the limited testing capacity at the start of the crisis and not everyone who catches the virus coming forward for a test.
Meanwhile, a further 57 people died within 28 days of testing positive for the virus, compared to 40 last Monday.
Hospitalisation data, published last week, shows 1,054 infected people sought NHS care on November 2, a drop of 3.2 per cent on one week earlier.
Some 25,840 first doses and 14,610 second doses were administered across the UK, meaning 50.2million over-12s (87.4 per cent) have had at least one injection and 45.8million (79.7 per cent) fully immunised.
And 209,885 people came forward for their booster jab, bringing the total to 10.3million people. The top-up injections, along with first jabs to 12 to 15-year-olds, are a key part of the Government's Plan A to bring down infection levels this winter.
It comes after Ms Pritchard suggested today there were '14 times' more coronavirus patients in hospital now compared to 'this time last year'.
The claim was picked up and circulated by a number of mainstream, left-leaning news outlets including Sky News, ITV and The i.
Ms Pritchard made the comments as she urged people to come forward for their booster vaccines and warned the health service was under 'very real pressure'.
Yet latest data from the Government's dashboard shows there were 800 average daily coronavirus admissions and 7,000 inpatients in England on Friday.
This time in November 2020, for comparison, the country was recording about 1,300 Covid hospitalisations each day and there were more than 11,000 patients in hospital with the disease.
NHS England was later forced to clarify that Ms Pritchard was referring to statistics from the start of September, when Covid hospital rates were in fact higher than the same time last year.
Professor Francois Balloux, director of the University College London Genetics Institute, described Ms Pritchard's claim as 'nonsense' and criticised news organisations for not challenging it.
Other researchers warned that the NHS chief executive had 'abused' the figures while political commentators said it was either the result of 'incompetence or mendacity'.
During a round of interviews this morning, Amanda Pritchard suggested that there were '14 times' more coronavirus patients in hospital now compared to 'this time last year'. Yet latest data from the Government's dashboard shows there were 800 average daily Covid admissions on November 3, compared to almost 1,300 at the same point last year
There were 7,000 inpatients in England on Friday compared to more than 11,000 patients in hospital with the disease on November 5 2020
