UK announces record 390 more coronavirus deaths including 19-year-old with NO underlying health conditions taking British total to 1,798 fatalities
- A massive 367 new coronavirus deaths have been recorded in England
- Another 23 were added in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
- England is the worst-hit country in the UK, with more than 1,600 deaths
- One of the fatalities announced today was a formerly healthy 19-year-old
- A new set of statistics launched today including deaths outside of hospitals
- Coronavirus symptoms: what are they and should you see a doctor?
A record-breaking 390 coronavirus deaths have been announced in the UK today, taking the total to 1,798 fatalities.
It marks today the darkest day so far for the NHS, which has seen patients dying by the dozen in hospitals in every corner of the country.
One of the victims announced today was just 19 years old and didn’t have any long-term health conditions, making them the UK’s youngest otherwise-healthy fatality.
England is at the centre of the ongoing crisis with 1,651 people there dying with COVID-19.
Today’s statistics added a further 367 deaths in England and 23 across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
It comes after government statisticians revealed today that the true death toll may be around 24 per cent higher than figures suggest when they released the first data set to include people who died outside of NHS hospitals.
An ambulance is pictured outside the ExCeL conference centre in London, which has been converted into a makeshift hospital for coronavirus patients
In its statement published this afternoon, NHS England said: ‘A further 367 people, who tested positive for the Coronavirus (Covid-19) have died, bringing the total number of confirmed reported deaths in England to 1,651.
‘Patients were aged between 19 and 98 years old and all but 28 patients (aged between 19 and 91 years old) had underlying health conditions.’
Increases in positive tests today pushed the number of diagnosed coronavirus patients in Scotland to 1,993 and in Northern Ireland to 586.
Data released yesterday had given a ray of hope for the future of the outbreak in the UK when it showed the death toll had dropped for two days in a row.
It marked the first time the daily increase in deaths has fallen for two days straight, dropping from 209 on Sunday and 260 on Saturday.
Meanwhile the number of confirmed cases in Britain appears to also be flattening, with just 2,619 new positive tests in the last 24 hours – an only 8 per cent rise from yesterday’s daily increase of 2,433.
But experts predict the true number to be more than two million because of the Government’s decision to only test patients so ill they are admitted to hospital.
At yesterday’s Government briefing, chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance also said the number of people being admitted to hospital with coronavirus is going up ‘in a constant amount’.
But he assured the public the fact the NHS was seeing an additional 1,000 patients a day with coronavirus-related admissions was ‘not an acceleration’ and that the health service was coping.