A further 13,864 cases of coronavirus and 87 new deaths have been confirmed in the UK in the last 24 hours.
According to the Department of Health, the coronavirus death toll in the UK now stands at 42,679.
The thousands of new cases confirmed today bring the total number of confirmed cases in the UK since the pandemic began to 575,679.
Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies show there have now been 58,000 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.
Government figures also show that there were 3,090 Covid-19 patients in hospital in England as of Friday 9 October.
That is up from 2,088 a week ago.
A total of 367 coronavirus hospital patients were in ventilation beds, up from 310 a week ago.
New figures suggest coronavirus cases are doubling about twice as fast in the North West, Yorkshire and the West Midlands compared to the whole of England.
Experts behind the React study said the rate of growth of the epidemic across England has slowed in the last month, but the country was now at a “critical point in the second wave”.
Separate data from the Office for National Statistics estimated that 224,400 people in England had coronavirus between September 25 and October 1, equating to about one in 240 people.
