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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World
Lily Waddell

UK sees dip in daily Covid cases at 39,906 with 84 more deaths

UK has recorded 39,906 daily Covid cases and 84 deaths in the latest figures on Thursday.

In comparison, the UK recorded 48,553 daily cases last Thursday as cases continued to climb and 63 deaths.

It comes after the UK posted the second highest country number of new Covid cases in the world on Wednesday, behind the US.

More than 44,104 daily cases were recorded in the highest Wednesday figure since January 13.

The so-called pingdemic - where people are told to self-isolate after a contact tests positive for coronavirus - has begun to have a huge significant impact on the UK amid the coronavirus pandemic.

A record number of 618,903 people were told to self-isolate last week after being “pinged” by the NHS Covid-19 tracing app, official figures revealed on Thursday.

Major UK supermarkets have issued warnings to shoppers about empty shelves amid “pingdemic”.

However, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng begged people not to delete their NHS app to avoid being “pinged” as he shared plans to unveil exempt workers.

“We are going to announce a list of exempt workers,” he told Sky News.

“The list of exemptions will be quite narrow because obviously you have to draw the line somewhere and what we want to do is keep people safe and that is why we have the self-isolation policy in the first place.”

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