No COVID-related deaths were recorded in the UK, 28 new cases

The UK hit a bittersweet milestone with zero daily COVID deaths for the first time since March last year.

The latest figures also reported another 3000 new cases. It comes amid concern over a recent small rise in cases linked to the variant first identified in India.

Public Health England says the death figure is “encouraging”, but echoes the health secretary’s call for people to get a vaccine due to rising cases.

UK leads the way with COVID vaccinations

Some experts have linked the UK’s successful vaccination roll-out to the zero-day milestone. Israel, another country leading the world’s vaccination efforts, also recently hit their zero-day milestone.

Eric Topol from Scripps Research Translational Institute said it’s “likely not a coincidence that the 2 countries leading the world in vaccination have both achieved zero death days now.”

Other countries fall behind on vaccination

BBC head of statistics Robert Cuffe noted the deaths reflected case numbers roughly a month ago, the daily count wasn’t a perfect picture and that some people who died over Monday public holiday could be reported on Wednesday.

“In fact, according to the UK’s current definition, deaths within four weeks of a positive test, there was a day with no reportable deaths last summer – on 30 July,” he wrote.

“But the government did announce some deaths on that day as they were using a different definition at the time.”The pandemic is far from over, but this is a unique day in its history to date.”