Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Saturday paid tribute as the official CCP virus death toll passed 150,000.
Separate figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show there have been 173,248 deaths registered in the UK where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate. Not all of the deaths were due to COVID-19.
The same data sets show 9,010 deaths involved COVID-19 in Wales, of which 87 percent (7,857) were due to COVID-19.
“Each and every one of those is a profound loss to the families, friends, and communities affected and my thoughts and condolences are with them,” the prime minister wrote.
Johnson urged people to get vaccinated, saying it’s the country’s “way out of this pandemic.”
The UK has experienced unprecedented numbers of new CCP virus infections in the past month, with the daily number peaking at four times the previous record, despite the high vaccination rate in the country, but the number of hospitalisations and deaths are much lower than the numbers in previous waves.
The number of new hospitalisations has surged since mid-December, but the increase appears to have slowed after Christmas. On Jan. 3, 2,434 new admissions in the UK had COVID-19.
Health officials have said a higher percentage of the new admissions have been incidental COVID, and the average length of stay in hospital appears to have shortened.
The number of COVID-19 patients in mechanical ventilation beds across the UK has largely remained stable, with 868 patients in mechanical ventilation beds on Thursday, compared to 4,077 recorded on Jan. 24, 2021.
The number of deaths has increased in the last few days, with 313 deaths reported on Saturday. The highest number of deaths in one day (1,485) was reported on Jan. 19, 2021.