Covid cases in England has tripled in a month in December and a startling 311,372 people being tested positive for the virus in the last week of 2020.

NHS Test & Trace figures which were published today showed the infection rate to be thrice higher than the weekly total at the end of November, when 97,340 people were tested positive.

The number of people testing positive in the week after Christmas cascaded by 24 per cent from the previous week.

Despite the number of people being tested dropping by almost a third, the proportion of people testing positive rose from 9 to 17 per cent  which is equivalent to one Covid19 positive in six people. 1.8million people were tested up to December 30, down 740,000 from 2.6m the week before and 2m the week before that. 

Tests rocketed to sky-high levels around the Christmas holidays as people in many parts of England were allowed to visit family for a day, topping at a record 509,000 swab tests in a single day on December 23.

Cases were significantly lower that week, however – at 251,674 – before increasing to more than 300,000 among people who took their tests between Christmas Eve and December 30. 

The total number of positives in the last week of the year was the highest among any week since Test & Trace started in May.

Public testing was not done during the first wave and many people with the virus didn't get tested, so it's impossible to know whether it is the most infections there have ever been in a week.

The news comes after Britain yesterday breached 1,000 daily coronavirus deaths for the first time since April and announced another record-high number of cases with 62,322 more positive tests.

Department of Health data showed the grim figure of 1,041 laboratory-confirmed deaths — only the 10th time the UK has topped the charts — was the UK's highest daily count since April 21. 

It was the third day in a row that Britain had posted a record-high number of cases, depicted the statistics 

A huge spike was seen in the number of people getting tested for Covid-19 means that only around a third now get turned around within their targeted time.

This means people are getting their results within 24-hours if they get tested at a drive-in or local test site, or 48 hours for smaller testing operations and postal swabs.

Although test turnaround time has improved by a bit on the week before at the end of December, there were still only 32 per cent of results returned within 24 hours from the biggest test sites. 

Local test centres, the walk-in centres that make up the bulk of public testing and accounted for 420,000 out of the 1.8m in that week, saw 33 per cent of results given within 24 hours. This was an advancement from just 12 per cent the previous week.