(Alliance News) - The UK has recorded its highest daily coronavirus death toll since the beginning of May, official data shows.
A further 696 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Wednesday, according to the government's coronavirus dashboard.
This is the highest daily total since 726 deaths were reported on May 5 – but a mid-week rise can be due to delays in reporting deaths over the weekend.
These figures are not the number of people who have died in a single day but the number of deaths reported in the past 24 hours.
The latest data brings the UK's total number of people to have died within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test to 56,533.
This cumulative total is one less than expected due to the removal of a previously reported duplicate death by Public Health Wales.
Separate figures published by the UK's statistics agencies for deaths where Covid-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate, together with additional data on deaths that have occurred in recent days, show there have now been 72,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK.
The government said that, as of 9am on Wednesday, there had been a further 18,213 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK, bringing the total number of cases in the UK to 1,557,007.
source: PA
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