LONDON, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Britain reported 141,472 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, down from 146,390 cases on Saturday, while the number of new deaths reported fell to 97 from 313, official figures showed. Britain has seen a surge of cases linked to the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in recent weeks, though death rates have been lower than during previous waves of the disease. Some 1.217 million people tested positive for COVID-19 during the past week, 6.6% more than the week before, while the number of deaths was up 30.9% on a week before at 1,295.