Plenty of people were still wearing face masks in London on Monday
(Picture: PA)The UK has recorded 39,950 more coronavirus cases, officials announced on Monday.
The figure bring the total recorded infections since the pandemic began in January 2021 to 5,473,477.
The latest single-day tally is the highest recorded on a Monday since January 11, when 46,169 infections were reported, amid a growing third wave of infections.
Another 19 deaths within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test have also been recorded. That brings the total UK death toll to 128,727.
Separate figures published by the Office for National Statistics show there have been 154,000 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.
Meanwhile, latest government data showed that of the 82,413,766 Covid jabs given in the UK, 46,314,039 were first doses - a rise of 18,186 on the previous day.
Some 36,099,727 were second doses, an increase of 128,878.
The latest figures came as the UK saw the removal of most remaining coronavirus restrictions on so-called Freedom Day.
People are no longer required by law to wear masks, although the Government has said they are still expected to be worn in certain situations.
Transport for London is requiring them to be worn as a “condition of carriage”, and Mayor Sadiq Khan on Monday urged commuters to continue wearing them.
England's railways, supermarkets and pubs warned the government on Monday that the Covid tracing app, which has told hundreds of thousands of workers to isolate, was wrecking the recovery and pushing supply chains to the brink of collapse.
Hundreds of thousands of workers have been pushed to self-isolate in recent days after they were identified as a contact of someone with the disease.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, finance minister Rishi Sunak and health minister Sajid Javid are all currently isolating amid the so-called ‘pingdemic’. Some pubs have shut, supply chains are teetering and the car breakdown service AA warned of longer response times at call centres.
The Government's chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, later warned there were "high levels of Covid and they are increasing".
"In the winter wave, we were up to around 60,000 people testing positive per day.,” he said. “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.
