Covid cases surging dangerously high in Brazil and India

More than half of people in England live in areas which have barely recorded any new Covid cases – with some showing increases close to zero for more than a month.

The latest 24-hour government figures show 106,000 people received their first dose of the Covid vaccine yesterday, more than 450,000 people had their second dose, 32 million people have now received their first dose of a vaccine and almost seven million people are fully vaccinated.

A further 40 people are reported to have died with Covid, bringing the UK total to just over 127,000.

There have been another 2,500 new cases in the UK but in other parts of the world Covid cases are surging dangerously out of control. Two of those global hotspots are India and Brazil.