Numbers of serious coronavirus cases in London are stabilising, a health chief has said.

Prof Yvonne Doyle, medical director of Public Health England, said hospital admissions for Covid-19 in the capital were reaching a plateau but they were still rising elsewhere in the UK.

London has had the highest number of – and steepest rise in – infections in Britain since the pandemic began.

The death toll for the whole UK has risen above 10,000 after another 737 fatalities were recorded in just 24 hours.

“We can begin to see London stabilising,” Prof Doyle said. “But on the other hand, for Great Britain we start to see other areas increasing, particularly the northwest and Yorkshire,” she added.

“It’s very important that the message about staying home and social distancing is adhered to because we are certainly not past this crisis’ damage yet.”

The murder of 14-year-old Jayden Moodie on Tuesday night highlights how youth violence continues to devastate the lives of young people, families and communities in London. Jayden’s death marks a new low point as he is the youngest victim to die on London’s streets so far this year.

We don’t know whether Jayden was himself involved in gangs or if his death was gang-related. All we know is that he was struck by a vehicle while riding a moped, then chased by a group of three men and stabbed to death in what police believe was a targeted attack. However, Jayden was killed in Leyton, part of the east London borough of Waltham Forest where the threat of gangs and gang violence looms large.

Last year, we published the results of a study looking at gangs in Waltham Forest, that provides some context for Jayden’s murder. As one of the many areas in London affected by rising youth violence, Waltham Forest has been at the forefront of gang interventions ever since the ground-breaking Reluctant Gangsters study was published in 2007. 

A decade ago, gangs in Waltham Forest were organised around postcode territories that young people defended from outsiders. Gang membership was a physical and emotional commitment – exhibited through gang “colours” and a real sense of local pride at being visibly present on the street.

Our research highlighted that gangs in Waltham Forest today view turf differently; less as symbolic hallowed ground, and more as a marketplace. Gangs are now more focused on profits, not postcodes. Two factors were responsible for this evolution: the ready availability of illicit drugs and the rise of social media.

Gangs had come to reject outward signs of gang membership as “bad for business” because they attracted unwanted attention from law enforcement agencies. They instead grew up and moved on to develop lucrative “county lines” operations in new areas where they were unknown to police.

County lines are predicated on an exploitation of people, not places. Leveraging young people’s boredom, poverty and lack of future prospects, gang elders cynically lure children into the drug trade with false promises of more money and status that rarely materialise, then entrap them through debt bondage and other coercive means. County lines have been linked with an increase in stabbings involving known drug dealers as victims or suspects, partly because grievances in illicit drugs markets cannot be settled through legal channels.

London‘s economy is doing even better after the banking crash than during the bubble – while nearly every other part of the UK has seen its economy shrink by comparison. Exclusive findings published by the Guardian show that London and the south-east are racing away from the rest of the UK at a pace that would have seemed almost incredible at the height of the financial panic.

During the boom from 1997 to 2006, London and the south-east was responsible for 37% of the UK’s growth in output. Since the crash of 2007, however, their share has rocketed to 48%. Every other nation and region – with the exception of Scotland – has suffered relative decline over the same period. The upshot is about a quarter of the population is responsible for half of the UK’s growth, leaving the remaining three-quarters of Britons to share the rest.

The research also shows that the UK’s highest-earners have become relatively more prosperous after the crash, while many on middle incomes are being squeezed hard. In austerity Britain, the top 20% of earning households are enjoying 37.5% of all Britain’s income growth, even after accounting for taxes and benefits.

These findings will embarrass the government, especially as they come shortly before the release of the latest GDP figures on Friday. Ministers are poised to celebrate news that the economy is at last enjoying strong growth, and may even have racked up its best quarter in 13 years. But the Guardian’s analysis raises questions about who is enjoying Britain’s growth and how sustainable it is, and will fuel the debate over who should bear the burden for an economic crisis that began in the Square Mile.