Covid-19 has claimed the lives of 75 more people in the UK, bringing the death toll to 158,318 since the virus made it to the country.
Over the past seven days 1,713 people have died because of the disease, a fall of 7% compared to the week before.
Another 60,578 positive tests were recorded today, bringing the pandemic long total to 17,749,999.
On Saturday a further 60,578 cases were recorded - down 20% from 76,069 last Saturday.
Along with this, 259 more Brits died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid.
The infection situation across the country has been improving over the past week.
Of the 377 local areas in the UK, 111 (29%) have seen a week-on-week rise in rates, 264 (70%) have seen a fall and two are unchanged.
Lisburn & Castlereagh in Northern Ireland has the highest rate in the UK, with 2,871 cases in the seven days to January 31 - the equivalent of 1,960.4 per 100,000 people.
This is up from a rate of 1,776.7 for the seven days to January 24.
Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon in Northern Ireland has the second highest rate, up slightly from 1,924.2 to 1,942.6, with 4,220 cases.
Cambridge has the third highest rate, down slightly from 1,812.7 to 1,796.7, with 2,247 cases.
Newport has the highest rate in Wales (733.8, down from 890.4) and Aberdeen City has the highest rate in Scotland (647.4, up from 583.3).
The five UK areas with the biggest week-on-week rises are:
Exeter (up from 1,294.5 to 1,653.0)
Hart (1,158.7 to 1,486.6)
Forest of Dean (1,002.2 to 1,273.1)
Guildford (985.7 to 1,245.1)
North Devon (1,000.3 to 1,226.4)
In more positive news, number of coronavirus patients being admitted to intensive care has dwindled to as few as 20 a day, it emerged today.
The numbers show how the Omicron strain fails to cause serious illness among most vaccinated people, it was reported.
An Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre study put the number of admissions to ICU of Covid patients at 19 on January 23, according to the Sunday Times.
