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PATRICK VALLANCE: ‘THERE ARE HIGH LEVELS OF COVID AND THEY ARE INCREASING’

The Government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance said there were “high levels of Covid and they are increasing”.

He said the UK was quite close to the previous “winter wave” of infections.

He told the Downing Street briefing: “In the winter wave, we were up to around 60,000 people testing positive per day. We are now somewhere on towards 50,000. So we’re quite close to the size of the winter wave of infections and this is going to increase.”

Discussing hospital admissions, Sir Patrick said it was “a somewhat different picture” as the numbers are expected to increase, although not to the same extent as before.

“We do expect there to be over 1,000 people per day. Being hospitalised with Covid because of the increase in infections, but the rates should be lower than they have been previously because of the protective effects of vaccination,” he said.