Just over 35,000 Britons have tested positive for Covid since Friday and 400 deaths have been registered in the same time, official data shows.
A delay to the Government's dashboard update on bank holiday Monday means today's stats include four days' worth of numbers - after ministers stopped publishing the figures on weekends following 'Freedom Day'.
It shows there were 35,635 new positive Covid tests over the last four days, working out at an average of just 8,900 daily cases since Friday. There were also 407 total deaths, equivalent of just over 100 daily.
Case numbers logged by the central testing scheme are becoming increasingly unreliable now that free swabs have been stopped for the vast majority of Britons.
Meanwhile, latest Covid hospital data shows there were 1,198 new admissions for the virus on April 27, which marked a near-19 per cent decrease on the previous week.
Daily hospitalisations have now fallen for 22 days in a row — despite NHS leaders calling for masks and outdoor mixing to return just weeks ago.
Pressure is mounting on the UK to scrap its daily Covid stats after Ireland said it would discontinue its updates in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, South Africa has once again become a focal point of the pandemic amid a fresh Covid surge of new subvariants.
Covid cases have nearly quadrupled in a month nationally and hospital admissions are ticking up in Gauteng province, the former epicentre of the original Omicron wave.
The world watched in horror last November as the super-infectious Omicron strain (BA.1) spread through South Africa at unprecedented speed — which turned out to be mild.
But now the country finds itself at the cusp of a fresh explosion in infections, this time due to sub-strains that appear even more transmissible and resistant to antibodies.
Researchers on the ground in South Africa say the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants can evade immunity and cause symptoms in people who were infected with their parent strain just months ago.
What is still unclear is whether the new wave will create milder or more severe illness — but experts tell MailOnline the former is more likely, for the UK at least.
Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious disease expert at the University of East Anglia, said Britain's second Omicron wave, triggered by the BA.2 subvariant, will have given Britons an extra layer of immunity against severe illness.
