In early-February, 2020, the first cases of the coronavirus (COVID-19) were reported in the United Kingdom (UK). The number of cases in the UK has since risen to 24,243,393, with 1,062 new cases reported on January 13, 2023. The highest daily figure since the beginning of the pandemic was on January 6, 2022 at 275,646 cases.

COVID deaths in the UK COVID-19 has so far been responsible for 202,157 deaths in the UK as of January 13, 2023, and the UK has one of the highest death toll from COVID-19 in Europe. As of January 13, the incidence of deaths in the UK is 298 per 100,000 population.

Regional breakdown The South East has the highest amount of cases in the country with 3,123,050 confirmed cases as of January 11. London and the North West have 2,912,859 and 2,580,090 cases respectively.

For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

As of August 11, 2022, over 23.4 million people in the United Kingdom had tested positive for COVID-19 with 3,948 cases reported on that day. During the large wave of cases in the winter 2020/21, the number of daily hospitalizations also peaked with both graphs taking similar shapes. Although hospitalizations did increase, rising case numbers at the end of 2021 did not fully corresponded into a similarly large surge as the previous winter, as experts pointed to the effectiveness of being vaccinated against COVID-19.

For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

As of February 4, 2022, in the age group 75 to 84 years old COVID-19 was involved in the deaths of 32,780 males and 23,390 females in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, since the pandemic started over 72 thousand deaths in the UK among those aged 85 years and above involved COVID-19. For further information about the COVID-19 pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

Based on a comparison of coronavirus deaths in 210 countries relative to their population, Peru had the most losses to COVID-19 up until July 13, 2022. As of the same date, the virus had infected over 557.8 million people worldwide, and the number of deaths had totaled more than 6.3 million. Note, however, that COVID-19 test rates can vary per country. Additionally, big differences show up between countries when combining the number of deaths against confirmed COVID-19 cases. The source seemingly does not differentiate between "the Wuhan strain" (2019-nCOV) of COVID-19, "the Kent mutation" (B.1.1.7) that appeared in the UK in late 2020, the 2021 Delta variant (B.1.617.2) from India or the Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) from South Africa.

The difficulties of death figures

This table aims to provide a complete picture on the topic, but it very much relies on data that has become more difficult to compare. As the coronavirus pandemic developed across the world, countries already used different methods to count fatalities, and they sometimes changed them during the course of the pandemic. On April 16, for example, the Chinese city of Wuhan added a 50 percent increase in their death figures to account for community deaths. These deaths occurred outside of hospitals and went unaccounted for so far. The state of New York did something similar two days before, revising their figures with 3,700 new deaths as they started to include “assumed” coronavirus victims. The United Kingdom started counting deaths in care homes and private households on April 29, adjusting their number with about 5,000 new deaths (which were corrected lowered again by the same amount on August 18). This makes an already difficult comparison even more difficult. Belgium, for example, counts suspected coronavirus deaths in their figures, whereas other countries have not done that (yet). This means two things. First, it could have a big impact on both current as well as future figures. On April 16 already, UK health experts stated that if their numbers were corrected for community deaths like in Wuhan, the UK number would change from 205 to “above 300”. This is exactly what happened two weeks later. Second, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly which countries already have “revised” numbers (like Belgium, Wuhan or New York) and which ones do not. One work-around could be to look at (freely accessible) timelines that track the reported daily increase of deaths in certain countries. Several of these are available on our platform, such as for Belgium, Italy and Sweden. A sudden large increase might be an indicator that the domestic sources changed their methodology.

Where are these numbers coming from?

The numbers shown here were collected by Johns Hopkins University, a source that manually checks the data with domestic health authorities. For the majority of countries, this is from national authorities. In some cases, like China, the United States, Canada or Australia, city reports or other various state authorities were consulted. In this statistic, these separately reported numbers were put together. For more information or other freely accessible content, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

Age-standardised mortality rates for deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19), non-COVID-19 deaths and all deaths by vaccination status, broken down by age group.

As of January 13, 2023, Bulgaria had the highest rate of COVID-19 deaths among its population in Europe at 548.6 deaths per 100,000 population. Hungary had recorded 496.4 deaths from COVID-19 per 100,000. Furthermore, Russia had the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths in Europe, at over 394 thousand.

Number of cases in Europe During the same period, across the whole of Europe, there have been over 270 million confirmed cases of COVID-19. France has been Europe's worst affected country with around 38.3 million cases, this translates to an incidence rate of approximately 58,945 cases per 100,000 population. Germany and Italy had approximately 37.6 million and 25.3 million cases respectively.

Current situation In March 2023, the rate of cases in Austria over the last seven days was 224 per 100,000 which was the highest in Europe. Luxembourg and Slovenia both followed with seven day rates of infections at 122 and 108 respectively.

The Large Angle Spectroscopic Coronagraph (LASCO) is a three coronagraph package which has been jointly developed for the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission by the Naval Research Laboratory (USA), the Laboratoire d'Astronomie Spatiale (France), the Max-Planck-Institut für Aeronomie (Germany), and the University of Birmingham (UK). LASCO comprises three coronagraphs, C1, C2, and C3, that together image the solar corona from 1.1 to 30 Rs (C1: 1.1 – 3 Rs, C2: 1.5 – 6 Rs, and C3: 3.7 – 30 Rs), where Rs stands for solar radius. The C1 coronagraph is a newly developed mirror version of the classic internally-occulted Lyot coronagraph, while the C2 and C3 coronagraphs are externally occulted Lyot coronagraphs. High-resolution imaging spectroscopy of the corona from 1.1 to 3 Rs can be performed with the Fabry-Perot interferometer in C1. High-volume memories and a high-speed microprocessor enable extensive on-board image processing.

LASCO scientific data products consist of calibrated and raw data images acquired by the LASCO cornagraphs (C2 and C3, and C1 at the beginning of the mission). Calibrated images can be derived from the raw data via IDL SolarSoft software. The cadence (time resolution) varied considerably over the mission lifetime (from hours in the early mission phase to 12 minutes in recent years). All SOHO/LASCO data are available from the public SOHO data archive at https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/soho/soho-science-archive

On January 12, 2021, over 4.5 thousand individuals in the UK were admitted to hospital with coronavirus (COVID-19), the highest single amount since the start of the pandemic. The daily hospital cases started to rise significantly at the end of 2020 and into January 2021, however since then the number of hospitalizations fell dramatically as the UK managed to vaccinate millions against COVID-19. Overall, since the pandemic started around 994 thousand people in the UK have been hospitalized with the virus.

The total number of cases in the UK can be found here. For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

In a survey carried out in March 2020, 51 percent of young people in the United Kingdom (UK) reported that the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the resulting public health measures have made their mental health a bit worse. Furthermore, 32 percent say the impact of the coronavirus crisis has made their mental health much worse, while only seven percent state that their mental health has improved in this time. The number of current coronavirus cases in the UK can be found here. For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

As of May 2, 2023, there were roughly 687 million global cases of COVID-19. Around 660 million people had recovered from the disease, while there had been almost 6.87 million deaths. The United States, India, and Brazil have been among the countries hardest hit by the pandemic.

The various types of human coronavirus The SARS-CoV-2 virus is the seventh known coronavirus to infect humans. Its emergence makes it the third in recent years to cause widespread infectious disease following the viruses responsible for SARS and MERS. A continual problem is that viruses naturally mutate as they attempt to survive. Notable new variants of SARS-CoV-2 were first identified in the UK, South Africa, and Brazil. Variants are of particular interest because they are associated with increased transmission.

Vaccination campaigns Common human coronaviruses typically cause mild symptoms such as a cough or a cold, but the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has led to more severe respiratory illnesses and deaths worldwide. Several COVID-19 vaccines have now been approved and are being used around the world.

Between January 1, 2021 and May 31, 2022, there were approximately 30.6 thousand deaths involving COVID-19 among 80 to 89 year olds in England, with over 14 thousand deaths occurring among unvaccinated people in this age group. Across all the age groups in the provided time interval, deaths involving COVID-19 among the unvaccinated population was around double the amount of people who received at least two doses of a vaccine. For further information about the COVID-19 pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

There were 11,607 deaths registered in England and Wales for the week ending February 21, 2025, compared with 12,365 in the previous week. During this time period, the two weeks with the highest number of weekly deaths were in April 2020, with the week ending April 17, 2020, having 22,351 deaths, and the following week 21,997 deaths, a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. Death and life expectancy As of 2022, the life expectancy for women in the UK was just over 82.5 years, and almost 78.6 years for men. Compared with 1765, when average life expectancy was under 39 years, this is a huge improvement in historical terms. Even in the more recent past, life expectancy was less than 47 years at the start of the 20th Century, and was under 70 as recently as the 1950s. Despite these significant developments in the long-term, improvements in life expectancy stalled between 2009/11 and 2015/17, and have even gone in decline since 2020. Between 2020 and 2022, for example, life expectancy at birth fell by 23 weeks for females, and 37 weeks for males.2. COVID-19 in the UK The first cases of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom were recorded on January 31, 2020, but it was not until a month later that cases began to rise exponentially. By March 5 of this year there were more than 100 cases, rising to 1,000 days later and passing 10,000 cumulative cases by March 26. At the height of the pandemic in late April and early May, there were around six thousand new cases being recorded daily. As of January 2023, there were more than 24.2 million confirmed cumulative cases of COVID-19 recorded in the United Kingdom, resulting in 202,156 deaths.

In April 2020, a survey carried out in the United Kingdom found that since the lockdown restrictions were imposed due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, 21 percent of respondents aged between 18 and 24 years experienced a bit more sleep of good quality than before the lockdown, while a further 15 percent said they had experienced a lot more good quality sleep than usual. On the other hand, 36 percent of people aged between 35 and 44 years, overall, said they are had been experiencing less good quality sleep than before. The latest number of cases in the UK can be found here. For further information about the coronavirus pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

As of July 13, 2022, approximately 53.7 million people in the United Kingdom had received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccination. The UK was the first country in the world to approve the use of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, and began inoculations on December 8, 2020. Nearly all the vaccines currently being used in the UK require two doses for full efficacy to occur, and according to the latest data around 50.3 million people had received their second dose of the immunization. Furthermore, 40.1 million booster vaccinations had been administered.

The total number of cases in the UK can be found here. For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

For the week ending March 7, 2025, weekly deaths in England and Wales were 124 below the number expected, compared with 460 fewer than expected in the previous week. In late 2022, and through early 2023, excess deaths were elevated for a number of weeks, with the excess deaths figure for the week ending January 13, 2023, the highest since February 2021. In the middle of April 2020, at the height of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, there were almost 12,000 excess deaths a week recorded in England and Wales. It was not until two months later, in the week ending June 19, 2020, that the number of deaths began to be lower than the five-year average for the corresponding week. Most deaths since 1918 in 2020 In 2020, there were 689,629 deaths in the United Kingdom, making that year the deadliest since 1918, at the height of the Spanish influenza pandemic. As seen in the excess death figures, April 2020 was by far the worst month in terms of deaths during the pandemic. The weekly number of deaths for weeks 16 and 17 of that year were 22,351, and 21,997 respectively. Although the number of deaths fell to more usual levels for the rest of that year, a winter wave of the disease led to a high number of deaths in January 2021, with 18,676 deaths recorded in the fourth week of that year. For the whole of 2021, there were 667,479 deaths in the UK, 22,150 fewer than in 2020. Life expectancy in the UK goes into reverse In 2022, life expectancy at birth for women in the UK was 82.6 years, while for men it was 78.6 years. This was the lowest life expectancy in the country for ten years, and came after life expectancy improvements stalled throughout the 2010s, and then declined from 2020 onwards. There is also quite a significant regional difference in life expectancy in the UK. In the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, for example, the life expectancy for men was 81.5 years, and 86.5 years for women. By contrast, in Blackpool, in North West England, male life expectancy was just 73.1 years, while for women life expectancy was lowest in Glasgow, at 78 years.

With the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and lockdown measures imposed in many countries in Europe, growth trends in online retail orders have displayed drastic ups and downs. As displayed in the statistic, in the United Kingdom (UK) weekly online retail transactions made in home and leisure categories saw a 200 percent increase since the start of the year. In the week immediately following the lockdown announcement, weekly growth rate for home and leisure retail went up by 200 percent compared to the same period in the previous year. This growth trend continued through April and the first two weeks of May, with sharp drops in the second half of May. Home and leisure retail referred to in this statistic included the following sub-sectors: Seasonal, Media & Entertainment, Food & Beverage, Home & Garden, Health & Beauty, Pet Care, Home Office, Business & Industrial.

Over 12 million people in the United States died from all causes between the beginning of January 2020 and August 21, 2023. Over 1.1 million of those deaths were with confirmed or presumed COVID-19.

Vaccine rollout in the United States Finding a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine was an urgent health priority since the very start of the pandemic. In the United States, the first two vaccines were authorized and recommended for use in December 2020. One has been developed by Massachusetts-based biotech company Moderna, and the number of Moderna COVID-19 vaccines administered in the U.S. was over 250 million. Moderna has also said that its vaccine is effective against the coronavirus variants first identified in the UK and South Africa.

Over the past pandemic year, a significant number of consumers in the United Kingdom (UK) have reported changes in their online shopping behavior. Specifically, in March 2020, about 40 percent of UK shoppers said they had been shopping more online, compared to before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. By February 2021, however, this percentage had grown to approximately 75 percent. By the same token, offline shopping has decreased over the analyzed period.