COVID-19: UK sees highest number of coronavirus cases since mass tests began 24 September 2020

The UK has recorded 6,634 new coronavirus cases, the government has announced, making it the highest daily figure since mass testing began.

Another 40 people have died within 28 days of testing positive for the virus.

The latest figures take the overall number of confirmed cases to 416,363, and total deaths to 41,902.

Meanwhile, people arriving in the UK from Denmark, Slovakia, Iceland and Caribbean island Curacao will need to self-isolate for 14 days from Saturday.

After falling from their April peak, confirmed new coronavirus cases in the UK have been rising again since July.


The latest surge in cases comes after Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced plans aimed at stopping mass job cuts over the winter months.

The government's new wage subsidy scheme, set to replace furlough, will see the government top up the pay of people unable to work full time.



The official records may show that the UK has just seen the highest number of new cases on a single day.

But it is, of course, nothing of the sort. At the peak of the pandemic in the spring we had such limited testing capacity that it was largely only hospital patients who were being checked.


It meant we were identifying just the tip of the iceberg.

Estimates have suggested there may have been as many 100,000 cases a day at the peak.

We are clearly not capturing all the infections - even now with the mass testing that is available.

Surveillance data last week suggested we may be identifying only about half of cases.

But that still puts the infection levels well below what they were in the spring.

Hospital admissions and deaths have also started creeping up, but are still very low.

Health experts have been clear we are now on the upwards path so we should expect this trend to continue.

Crucial will be how quickly figures rise for all three measures, with the hospital cases and deaths the most important.

Evidence from Spain and France, which started seeing rises a few weeks before us, offer some hope.


Cases have been climbing gradually - at least more gradually than the trajectory government scientists warned could lead the UK to 50,000 cases a day by mid-October.