A further 934 cases of COVID-19 in the North of Ireland have been announced by the Department of Health.
That is more than twice the previous daily high of 424 on Wednesday.
One further death was recorded in the last 24 hours.
The number of hospital inpatients with the virus has dropped from 70 to 65.
The figures come as Chief Scientific Adviser Prof Ian Young said the North of Ireland may need more than one Coronavirus “circuit breaker” this winter.
A circuit breaker is a lockdown for a short period of time, possibly two weeks, to slow the spread of the virus.
Friday’s figures show 201 new cases in the Derry and Strabane council area, 191 in Belfast and 182 in Newry and Mourne.
There have now been 1,283 positive cases within the council boundary since March this year.
Derry and Strabane now has 422.8 cases per 100,000, Newry and Mourne 213.7, Belfast 161.5 and Northern Ireland as a whole 139.4. Mid and East Antrim now has the lowest rate in NI at 33.2.
The man who died was in a hospital in the Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon area.
The Department of Health has now recorded 12,886 positive cases – 2,623 of them in the last week; 6.038 people were tested in the last 24 hours.
The department has recorded 582 Covid-19 related deaths since the pandemic began.
The number of deaths registered by the NI Statistics and Research Agency (Nisra), is one more than the previous week, according to the latest bulletin from the
It counts deaths where the virus is mentioned on the death certificate, and reports 901 deaths up to last Friday.
The Department of Health’s daily figure for the same date was 578 – more than 300 lower.
The figures from Nisra show 483 deaths in hospital, including the deaths of 81 people normally resident in care homes.
Taking that figure, and the 356 people who died in care homes, it means care home residents account for almost half of all COVID-19 related deaths (48.5%).
Eight people died in hospices (0.9%) and 54 at residential or other locations (6.0%).
People aged 75 and over account for 79% of all COVID-19 related deaths, with almost a third of those who have died having a council area Belfast address (28.8%).
The provisional number of all deaths between 18 September and 25 September was 323 – 1 more than in the previous week (322) and 35 more than the five-year average (288).
Those are deaths over and above what would normally be expected at the time of year, averaged over five years.
The agency says 1,216 ‘excess deaths’ have been registered in the past 26 weeks.
Tags: