Community’s coronavirus death toll nears 650

Nearly 650 British Jews have now died from coronavirus.

The community is approaching another grim milestone, as the Board of Deputies released its first mortality figures of 2021.

This comes after after a third national lockdown was announced on Monday evening,  amid soaring cases and a new rapidly-spreading strain of the virus.

The figures, collated by the Board of Deputies with seven of the community’s largest burial boards, shows 14 funerals for the week ending 25 December and 18 for the week ending 1 January, where the deceased had contracted the virus.

This brings the number of Coronavirus-related deaths in the community to 648, up from 616 before the New Year.

In mid-December, it was reported that there had been the biggest increase in communal Covid deaths for seven months.

After last month’s figures were released, Board President Marie van der Zyl said it “recorded a larger increase in reported Covid-19 mortality in the Jewish community this week than in previous weeks.

“This may or may not be the start of a trend” but “it serves as a reminder that we should all be carefully adhering to Government guidance.”

Figures are collated with regional Jewish communities and the Jewish Small Communities Network, the Adass Yisroel Burial Society, Federation of Synagogues, Joint Jewish Burial Society, Liberal Judaism, The Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi Community, the United Synagogue, and Orthodox burial societies in Manchester.

More than 75,000 have died nationally, with 1.68m million fatalities globally.