Over 33M people in UK fully vaccinated against coronavirus

By Karim El-Bar

LONDON (AA) - The UK's number of new coronavirus cases slightly dropped on Friday, while the latest figures showed over 33 million Brits have now been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Britain saw 27,125 new cases over the past 24 hours, compared to 27,989 the day before. The UK also recorded a further 27 fatalities on Friday.

This brings the total number of infections since the start of the pandemic to over 4.8 million, and the death toll to 128,189.

In terms of vaccinations, over 45 million Brits, 85.5% of the population, have received their first dose, and over 33 million, 63.1%, their second.

The UK’s R number, which measures the rate of the virus’s reproduction, dropped from between 1.2 and 1.4 last week to between 1.1 and 1.3 this week – despite the high case numbers.

An R number of 1.1 means that every 10 people infected will go on to infect 11 others.