There have been a further 12,872 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK in the last 24 hours, the Government has announced.
It brings the total number of cases in the UK to 480,017.
The number of cases have nearly doubled in the last 24 hours, from 6,968 lab cases on Friday.
A further 49 people have died after 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19, bringing the total number of UK deaths to 42,317.
Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies show there have now been nearly 57,900 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.
The Government said that due to a technical issue which has since been resolved, there has been a delay in publishing a number of cases.
This means the total reported over the coming days will include some additional cases from the period between September 24 and October 1.
A further 42 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths reported in hospitals to 30,138, NHS England said on Saturday.
Patients were aged between 44 and 100 years old. Three patients, aged between 49 and 82, had no underlying health conditions.
The deaths were between August 8 and October 2.
Eight other deaths were reported with no positive Covid-19 test result.
The latest figures come as the number of daily coronavirus infections continues to rise across the country.
On Friday, it emerged that the coronavirus R rate is above one and is continuing to creep up, which suggests "widespread growth of the epidemic across the country."
Data released by Sage shows the estimate for R for the whole of the UK is between 1.3 and 1.6.
Last week, the R number was lower - at between 1.2 and 1.5.
And the latest daily growth rate range for the UK is from + 5 per cent a day to + 9.
In Greater Manchester, there have been another 10 deaths recorded in the region's hospitals, bringing the total death toll to 2,298.
