Almost 900 beds in Essex hospitals are taken up by Covid patients – new figures have now revealed.

New Government numbers show the number of beds containing confirmed Covid-19 patients was at 886 on January 12.

These figures cover the Mid and South Essex NHS Trust which runs Southend, Basildon and Broomfield Hospitals.

The statistics also show how the number of patients admitted in a 24 hours period with the virus plus the number of patients diagnosed in hospital with Covid was 89 on the same day.

Figures also show there are 1546 people in the hospital beds in total - meaning more than half are patients with Covid.

It comes after more than 180,000 Covid vaccines have been given to people in the East of England, official data has confirmed.

Vaccination data has been released for the first time and shows that in the East a total of 182,544 doses have been administered.

This figure includes first and second doses.