these numbers are driven by the rapid spread of the 0micron variant. here's our political correspondent ben wright. we are still within a rising wave of infection. it's surging across the country. and this is what ministers and officials had expected. what we have seen is a sort of fracturing of the response to these figures across the uk. so we've seen the governments in wales, scotland, northern ireland announce tighter curves for people's activities after christmas day, whereas we wait, of course, to see if that's a path that the westminster government is going to go down for england. at the moment, they have said no new restrictions in england before christmas day. after that, there remains a huge question mark. this is a graph of uk cases in december. eight of the ten highest daily totals have been this month. but government modelling had estimated the uk would be at 200,000 cases a day by now.