UK Covid cases up by more than half a million in last 7 days as infections continue to soar

Covid-19 cases in the UK have risen by almost 50 per cent in one week as new variants continue to spread

Health secretary Sajid Javid urged people to get their booster jabs amid growing Covid-19 cases. (Getty Images)

UK Covid-19 cases have risen up by more than half a million in the last seven days as infections continue to soar across the country.

The UK Health Security Agency confirmed that 516,289 cases and 744 deaths within 28 days of a positive test have been reported in the last seven days, as of Wednesday 16 March.

On Tuesday, there were 492,103 cases and 714 deaths reported over the previous seven days.

A new coronavirus variant, dubbed ‘Stealth Omicron’, is thought to be responsible for around 57 per cent of current cases in England.

Stealth Omicron is a subvariant of the Omicron variant and scientists fear it to be more transmissable.

In Feburary, England eased all of its coronvarius restrictions, including the legal responsibility to self-isolate following a positive case, and health secretary Sajid Javid said a rise in infections is to be “expected”.

He said the UK remains in a “very good position” but he urged adults eligible for a booster vaccine to come forward and get the jab.

Health secretary, Sajid Javid, said cases are “expected” to rise and new variants and not concerning at this time. (Victoria Jones/PA) (PA Wire)

Omicron and its variants remain the most dominant strain of the virus globally, accounting for 98.8 per cent of cases submitted to the GISAID global database for virus tracking since 25 January.

Another variant, titled ‘Deltacron’, was also discovered by scientists in France and is thought to have been circulating since January.

Deltacron has elements of both the Delta and Omicron variants. On cases of Deltacron in the UK, Mr Javid told BBC Breakfast: “I think there’s only a handful of cases here in the UK, it’s not something that’s of particular concern to us at this point in time.

“We do keep the situation under review on a daily basis, but the dominant variant in the UK – 99.9% of infections are Omicron infections,” he said.

“And whilst the rate has gone up modestly in the last few days, that’s to be expected as we are now open as a country and there’s more social mixing, but there’s nothing in the data at this point in time that gives us any cause for concern.”