Nearly 650,000 people have tested positive for Covid in the past seven days after a further 95,787 UK cases were confirmed this afternoon.
Tragically the Department of Health said 288 people have died within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus, bringing the government's official death toll to 153,490.
In the past two days, the number of cases had again risen above 100,000 after a significant drop in recorded infections.
There have now been 646,835 cases in the past seven days - a 27 per cent drop on the week before.
It comes as the Government announced its Plan B measures to stop the spread of Covid-19 are to be scrapped.
Last Friday, there were 99,652 confirmed infections and 270 deaths, while a fortnight ago there were 178,250 cases and 229 fatalities.
This week under-fire PM Boris Johnson said that measures such as working from home, mandatory face coverings and vaccine passports were being scrapped.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the UK was moving into the "next chapter" in the battle against the virus.
Experts are increasingly confident that the peak of the latest Omicron wave has passed and the number of people in ventilator beds was this week at its lowest level since July last year.
The estimated range of England's reproduction "R" number has fallen to between 0.8 and 1.1, the UK Health Security Agency said on Friday, indicating that cases are likely shrinking.
An R number between 0.8 and 1.1 means that for every 10 people infected, they will on average infect between 8 and 11
other people. Last week the range was 1.1 to 1.5.
The daily growth of infections was estimated at between -6% to +1%, a big fall from the previous week's range of +1% to +5%.
Earlier today figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggested that the true number of infections was far higher than the official numbers in the week after Christmas.
Statisticians estimate that nearly half a million people were contracting the virus each day from December 26 to January 1 - three times the number announced on average.
It comes as health agencies have urged caution about interpreting the regular case numbers published each day for the UK, following changes in rules about testing.
An average of 173,400 new cases of coronavirus per day were recorded, according to the Government's Covid-19 dashboard.
But the true number of cases was likely to be nearer 479,100 a day, according to estimates by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The sharp difference in totals reflects just how many new cases of Covid-19 are being missed in the dashboard figures, which count only those people who have reported themselves as having tested positive for the virus.
