UK Labour Leader Keir Starmer Tests Positive For COVID-19

This comes after 218,724 COVID-19 infections were registered in the UK on Tuesday, the highest daily total since the coronavirus pandemic began a couple of years ago.

A spokesperson for Keir Starmer said on Wednesday that the UK Labour Party leader had tested positive for COVID-19.

The spokesperson added that Starmer had planned to face Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a question and answer session in parliament scheduled for later in the day and that the Labour leader's deputy, Angela Rayner, will take his place.

Starmer also tested positive for the coronavirus in October 2021 and has had to isolate four times during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The news followed 218,724 confirmed COVID cases being registered in the UK on Tuesday, in the highest daily total since the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020.

Late last week, Health Secretary Sajid Javid stressed that further coronavirus restrictions in England must be a "last resort" and that the country should prepare to "live alongside" COVID-19 in 2022.

At the same time, he pointed out that the record-breaking wave of the new coronavirus variant Omicron would "test the limits of finite NHS [National Health Service] capacity even more than a typical winter".

He spoke as Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed that there would be no further COVID restrictions in addition to "Plan B".

According to him, even though Omicron continues to "surge" across the UK, new measures were unnecessary at this stage because the new variant was "plainly milder" than previous strains.