THERE have been 24 Covid deaths recorded by hospitals across our part of the North-East in the last week.

The figures, released by NHS England today, cover the last seven days from November 6 to November 13.

In that period, a total of five people have died at hospitals within the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust.

Five have died at Gateshead hospitals in the last week and five deaths were also recorded at the Northumbria Healtcare NHS Trust.

There have been two Covid deaths recorded at North Tees and Hartlepool hospitals and five at the South Tees NHS Trust hospitals.

There has been one Covid death reported at South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Trust and one at York Teaching NHS Trust in the last week.

The NHS figures say that across the whole of the North-East and Yorkshire region, there have been 79 Covid deaths recorded in hospitals in the period from November 6 to November 13.

According to the case figures published by the Government this afternoon, there have been 81,493 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the North-East since the start of the pandemic.

And the latest Government figures say there have been a total of 2,916 recorded Covid deaths in the North-East region.

Nationally, the Government said a further 462 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Saturday, bringing the UK total to 51,766.

Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies for deaths where Covid-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate, together with additional data on deaths that have occurred in recent days, show there have now been 67,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK.

The Government said that, as of 9am on Saturday, there had been a further 26,860 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK.

It brings the total number of cases in the UK to 1,344,356.