Britain has started counting possible Covid-19 reinfections in its daily coronavirus data, changing its approach to reflect the increased number of people catching the disease for a second time as the Omicron variant predominates.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) added around 840,000 cases to the cumulative total, taking it to 17.3 million coronavirus infections reported, Reuters reports.

Britain's daily Covid statistics previously would only count people who had tested positive for the first time to avoid double-counting people who had received multiple positive test results for the same infection.