Covid contributed to more than 20,000 deaths in England and Wales during the first half of 2022, heartbreaking new data reveals.
The virus was identified on 20,327 death certificates - meaning medics had ruled Covid was a factor in a person dying - figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show.
Since the start of the pandemic 177,264 lives have been lost to Covid-19, ONS stated.
It comes as health chiefs brace for difficult months, with hospital cases up by more than a third in the past seven days.
Covid was listed on an average of 813 death certificates per week in the first 25 weeks of this year, analysis by The Mirror shows.
Although this is dramatically down on 2021, many more people are dying this summer from the virus than the same period last year.
In the four weeks to June 24 this year Covid was mentioned on 1,019 death certificates, compared to 383 in the same period in 2021.
But overall there has been a massive fall in the number of people dying after contracting coronavirus since the start of the year.
By this point last year Covid had been referenced on 57,920 death certificates - meaning there has been a 66 per cent drop.
New Omicron sub-variants are fuelling a sharp rise in infections, with one in 30 people in England and Wales estimated to have the virus at the end of June.
The latest set of data reveals more worrying news in the number of people dying of all causes.
The number of deaths recorded in England and Wales in the week to June 24 was 1,540 higher than the five-year average, while coronavirus contributed to around 2.6 per cent of deaths.
Yesterday Simon Clarke, associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, told The Mirror people need to be more cautious as they go about their normal business.
He said: "People may want to be cautious with their movements and their behaviours and probably behave more like they did when covid was more in people's consciousness.
"The increase in hospital admissions means the pressure is once again on the NHS, as staffing will become an issue for all services as more nurses and doctors become infected.
"Most people with the infection are feeling unwell enough to be off work."
Health chiefs have warned that the UK faces a "bumpy ride" in its battle against the virus.
In England alone there are 9,389 people in hospital with the virus. Around 60 per cent are primarily being treated for something else, but still need to be isolated to protect vulnerable patients.
There were 219 people in ventilation beds in England on Friday, government data shows.
Dame Jenny Harries, who is chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, said the current wave has not yet peaked, and urged people to "go about their normal lives" but in a "precautionary way".
Dame Jenny said told the BBC ': "It doesn't look as though that wave has finished yet, so we would anticipate that hospital cases will rise. And it's possible, quite likely, that they will actually peak over the previous BA.2 wave.
"But I think the overall impact, we won't know. It's easy to say in retrospect, it's not so easy to model forward."
She said the majority of cases in the UK now are BA.4 and BA.5 and that the latter is "really pushing and driving this current wave".
She added that people should "go about their normal lives but in that precautionary way", highlighting handwashing, keeping distance where possible and wearing a face covering in enclosed, poorly ventilated places.
