UK's rate of COVID-19 infection slowing

By Karim El-Bar

LONDON (AA) - The UK's rate of growth in coronavirus cases has dropped to a range of 0.8-1.0, according to the British government on Friday.

The rate of growth, or R number, shows how quickly the virus is spreading -- or shrinking -- by indicating how many people an infected person goes on to infect.

Friday's R number is the lowest since August, which means the number of new infections is actually decreasing by 1-3%.

On Thursday, the UK passed 60,000 deaths from COVID-19.

UK government data released on Friday showed that there were 16,298 new cases of people testing positive for coronavirus over the past 24 hours across the UK.

This is a drop of 15,943, or 13.6%, over the last week. The total number of confirmed cases now stands at 1,690,432.

The data also showed that there were further 504 deaths in the past day -- a fall of 200, or 6.1% -- raising the total number of fatalities to 60,617.