More than 10,000 Londoners have now died after contracting Covid-19, Mayor Sadiq Khan said on Wednesday.
Mr Khan described the death toll as “heartbreaking” and has written to the Prime Minister pleading for extra lockdown restrictions in the city.
It came as more than 1,500 new coronavirus deaths were recorded across the UK, marking the country’s deadliest day of the pandemic.
Public Health England also revealed that more people have now died in the second wave of the virus than in the first.
According to analysis by the PA news agency, it means that the UK’s Covid-19 death toll has now passed 100,000.
“Many of the families will be listening to this programme now and they’re in my thoughts and prayers… it’s heartbreaking it’s come to this,” Mr Khan told LBC.
Mr Khan said he and the leader of London Councils, Georgie Gould, have written to the Prime Minister “pleading with him to have additional restrictions on our city”.
“We think that’s the best way to save lives and stop the NHS being overwhelmed,” he added.
The Mayor said more measures were needed to get control of the virus, including the closure of places of worship and the use of masks in outdoor settings when social distancing is not impossible.
He told Sky News: “I want to thank the mosques, the churches, the synagogues, the gurdwaras, the temples that have all voluntarily closed down. But the government should be requiring all places of worship to close down.”
Mosques in the London boroughs of Harrow, Redbridge, Hackney and Leyton as well as in Cambridge and Woking have closed their doors in the past few days.
Steven Wilson, the chief executive of the United Synagogue, which represents more than 60 congregations in the UK said: “We are faced with the agonising decision about whether to close our shuls.”
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson was grilled over the government's response to the pandemic and said there were concerns about a new strain of coronavirus identified in Brazil.
“We are concerned about the new Brazilian variant,” he told MPs sitting on the liaison committee.
