UK records more than 10,000 daily COVID-19 cases for first time

On Sunday, the country recorded 12,872 new COVID cases, while also registering 49 deaths due to COVID-19.

The government, however, clarified that a technical issue meant some cases this week were not recorded at the time so these were included in Saturday's data, the BBC reported.

According to data released this week, infections may be increasing, but at the slower rate than in the previous weeks.

This data was based on weekly testing among a sample of people in the community to get an idea of how many people in England have the virus at any time.

The government which keeps a close watch on the daily number of positive cases, to get the most up-to-date snapshot on the number of actual cases, however, published a cautionary message on its "data dashboard", explaining that the totals cases reported over the coming days would include some cases from the previous week, thereby "increasing the number of cases reported".

The announcement of the apparent glitch in the daily count comes "at an awkward moment", according to BBC health editor Hugh Pym, "when there is intense scrutiny of daily COVID-19 data as ministers and health chiefs try to assess the rate of spread of the virus".

The daily total saw a significant rise from 4,044 on Monday to a then-high of 7,143 on Tuesday, which in the next four days remained stable - varying between 6,914 and 7,108.

Then on Saturday, a far bigger day-on-day increase than at any time in the entire pandemic, which was announced five hours later than the usual time and was accompanied by the government explanation.

The inflated figures announced on Saturday was due to the fact that 264,979 tests were processed the previous day, the third-highest there has been so far in a single 24-hour period, bringing the total number of recorded cases in the UK to 480,017., which is largely reflected across Europe.