THE Covid-19 death toll at Carlisle's Cumberland Infirmary and West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven is continuing to mount, with eight fatalities reported this week.

The latest figures released by NHS England today confirm that since the pandemic began, the North Cumbria Integrated Care Foundation trust which runs the two hospitals has reported the deaths of 282 covid patients. The worst recent day was January 5 when four lives were lost.

There were two deaths on January 4 and two more on January 6.

Since Christmas Eve, 24 covid patients who were being treated by the trust have died.

In south Cumbria, the NHS trust which runs Furness General Hospital and Westmorland General in Kendal, as well as Royal Lancaster Infirmary, has reported 401 fatalities. Of these, 39 have been in the last 16 days, according to new Government data.

Carlisle continues to have the county's highest infection rate, with 1,013 new cases confirmed in the last week. The weekly cases figure for Allerdale is 441; for Copeland 188; for Eden 363; for Barrow 223; and for South Lakeland 287.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to stage his latest coronavirus update from Downing Street at 5pm today as the UK attempts to boost its vaccination capabilities. He will be joined by NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens and Brigadier Phil Prosser of the Army's 101 Logistic Brigade.

The Army is helping with the rollout of the new coronavirus vaccines.

The latest national figures confirm that there were 1,162 covid deaths recorded across the UK in the last 24 hours (all the patients having tested positive for Covid-19 in the last 28 days. There were 52,618 new infections reported. So far in UK, 1.3 million people have had a covid vaccination jab.