Coronavirus: 315 die with COVID-19 in UK – as government misses daily testing target

The number of people who have died with coronavirus in UK hospitals, care homes and the wider community has risen by 315, bringing the total number of fatalities to 28,446.

The official Department of Health figures were offered by cabinet minister Michael Gove during Sunday’s news briefing.

Mr Gove revealed that 76,496 coronavirus tests were carried out in the 24 hours to 9am on Sunday – below the government’s target.

The target of 100,000 tests per day by the end of April had been met the previous two days.

Mr Gove also admitted there will be a time, when the virus is under control, when “deep and probing questions” about the government’s handling of the crisis can be asked.

“Undoubtedly this government, like all governments, will have made mistakes,” he said.

Meanwhile, Professor Stephen Powis, the national medical director of NHS England, told the briefing that the current R number across the UK is around 0.7 – meaning the lockdown restrictions to slow the spread of the virus are working.

“R” is shorthand for reproductive rate and is a measure of how many people, on average, will be infected for every one person who has the disease.

Governments across the world see it as crucial, in terms of lifting lockdown restrictions, that R is below 1.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pledged to set out a “comprehensive plan” on how to ease the lockdown on Thursday.

Prof Powis said there have been fewer hospital admissions as a result of social distancing measures, effectively flattening the curve.

Asked if NHS Nightingale hospitals were built in error, he said: “Absolutely 100% not”.

He said it would have been “foolish” to have not planned for extra capacity within the NHS and the situation could have been “a hundred, a thousand times more critical”.

Mr Gove also confirmed that Britain will trial a new coronavirus tracking programme next week on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England, in a bid to minimise the risk of a second wave of the infection.

“This week we will be piloting new test, track and trace procedures on the Isle of Wight with a view to having that in place more widely later this month,” he told the news conference.

Each home nation also disclosed the latest daily figures for hospital deaths on Sunday.

In England, the number of people who have died with the virus in hospitals has risen by 327 to 21,180. These figures are calculated over a different time period.

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In Northern Ireland, five more people have died with COVID-19, bringing the total number of deaths to 381.

A further 14 people have died in Wales, taking the total number of deaths there to 983, Public Health Wales said.

Scotland deaths have risen by 12 to 1,571, with a total of 60,295 people being tested for the virus.

Yesterday, a further 621 people across the UK were confirmed to have died with coronavirus, bringing the nationwide total to 28,131.

Earlier, transport secretary Grant Shapps admitted that fewer Britons would have died from coronavirus if more tests had been available earlier.

Speaking on Andrew Marr, he said “many things” could have been different if the UK’s testing capacity was above 100,000 before COVID-19 spread in the country.

He added: “The fact of the matter is this is not a country that had – although we’re very big in pharmaceuticals as a country – we’re not a country that had very large test capacity.”

Mr Shapps said the NHSX contact tracing app, which will be rolled out later this month, requires 50%-60% of people to use for it to be successful.

(c) Sky News 2020: Coronavirus: 315 die with COVID-19 in UK – as government misses daily testing target