£34.5m stolen in pandemic scams

More than 6,000 cases of Covid-related fraud and cyber-crime have been recorded by the UK's police forces during the pandemic.

The Action Fraud team said £34.5m had been stolen since 1 March 2020.

It covers activity in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, but not Scotland.

In a related development, the National Cyber Security Centre has told the BBC it is tackling about 30 "significant attacks" a month against the country's pandemic response infrastructure.

These involves attempts to breach the NHS, vaccine producers and vaccine supply chains, among other organisations.

"There unfortunately have been a number of successful ransomware incidents against businesses – I can think of roughly around 10," NCSC operations director Paul Chichester said.