Scotland, N.Ireland suffer record COVID infections

LONDON

Scotland and Northern Ireland recorded record numbers of new coronavirus cases on Saturday, official statistics showed.

Scotland announced 714 new cases over the past 24 hours, up from yesterday’s tally of 558 new cases, which was itself a new record.

Northern Ireland recorded 319 new cases over the past 24 hours, an increase on Friday’s tally of 273, which was the record until today.

Overall, however, the number of UK cases decreased for the first time in five days – 6,042 new cases were recorded across the UK over the past 24 hours, bringing the total to date to 429,277.

The data also showed 34 more deaths from coronavirus across the UK over the past few days.