Coronavirus: UK records 413 more hospital deaths in lowest daily toll since March

‘The thousands of new infections identified suggest we had a much larger number than we thought before the lockdown’

A further 413 people have died with coronavirus in UK hospitals, the lowest one-day total since 31 March.

The government said deaths registered in the 24 hours up to 9am on Saturday took the country's hospital death toll to 20,732.

Although recorded death numbers are always lower at weekends, health chiefs hope the latest tally is part of a downward trend.

A total of 152,840 have now tested positive for Covid-19 in the UK, of which 4,463 came in the past 24 hours.

But there are fears that many more people have also died in care homes, hospices and in the community, and experts cautioned "we should not draw the wrong lesson from these figures".

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Prof James Naismith, director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute and professor at the University of Oxford, said: “Any decrease in announced deaths is welcome; it seems likely the normal problem with weekends will explain the unusually lower number today.

“The number of new infections remains in the thousands, but social-distancing is working. The R value has not gone to zero, when below 1 the virus spreads but with new infections decreasing each day.

“As testing capability improves, we should do better at getting a true measure of the number of infected people.

“The thousands of new infections identified today do not suggest the virus is still spreading rapidly – rather, they suggest that we had a much larger number of infections than we identified before the lockdown.

“Such large numbers of viral infections will take time to burn out. Unfortunately, the virus takes us in an express elevator to the top of the peak but we have to find our way back down by the stairs.”

Foreign secretary Dominic Raab on Sunday dismissed renewed calls from business chiefs for an early easing of the UK's lockdown, saying the outbreak was still at a “delicate and dangerous” stage.

He said officials were also looking at possible sea and airport checks, with passengers arriving in the UK required to quarantine themselves for 14 days.

England has suffered 18,419 deaths in total from coronavirus, government figures show; Scotland 1,231; Wales 788 and Northern Ireland 294.

London still has the highest death toll, followed by the northwest and the southeast.​