The country is the seventh to cross the 150,000 death threshold, after the US, Brazil, India, Russia, Mexico and Peru, according to the BBC.
There were also 146,390 new infections in one day. The new deaths were announced at a time when the National Health Service (NHS) continues to face significant stress from the omikron variant and records record high new infections, although death rates are nowhere near as sharp as they were in the pandemic due to vaccinations and new strain believed to be milder.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, 14,333,794 people have been infected in the United Kingdom.
A scientist advising the government said the total after another 313 deaths were announced Saturday is an “absolute tragedy” made worse because “many deaths could have been avoided if we had acted earlier in the first and second wave”.
Data from the National Health Service (NHS) shows that 39,142 NHS staff in England were absent on January 2 for Covid19 reasons, a 59 per cent increase from the previous week (24,632) and more than three times the number of early December (12.508). Defense has about 9,300 soldiers ready to help