People commute along Westminster Bridge in London, Britain, Feb. 17, 2021. [Photo/Xinhua]
Another 6,385 people in Britain have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 4,194,785, according to official figures released Wednesday.
The country also reported another 315 coronavirus-related deaths, taking the toll to 123,783. These figures only include the deaths of people who died within 28 days of their first positive test.
The new figures came as more than 20.7 million people in Britain have been given the first jab of a coronavirus vaccine.
Meanwhile, the number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals in England dropped below 10,000 on Wednesday for the first time since November, according to figures from the National Health Service (NHS) England.
A British study has shown that one dose of Pfizer-BioNTech or AstraZeneca vaccine helps to significantly reduce risks of hospitalization, especially among people in their 80s who have other illnesses.
"These early results show the UK COVID-19 vaccine program is working better than we could have hoped," said Adam Finn, chief investigator of the AvonCAP study at the University of Bristol.
England is currently under the third national lockdown since the outbreak of the pandemic in the country. Similar restriction measures are also in place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
On Feb. 22, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his long-anticipated "roadmap" for exiting the lockdown. Schools in England will reopen from Monday as the first part of the four-step plan, which Johnson said was designed to be "cautious but irreversible."
To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Germany, Russia and the United States have been racing against time to roll out coronavirus vaccines.
