UK Coronavirus death toll rises by 545 to 35,341

'Sustained decline across all four of our nations' in number of people needing ventilators, scientific adviser says.

An additional 545 people have died in the UK after contracting the coronavirus over a 24 hour period, the highest daily increase for a week - the government has confirmed.

The increase to the total number of fatalities, announced by environment minister George Eusticeduring the government's daily briefing from Downing Street, brings the total number of people to have died in all settings after testing positive for the virus to 35,341.

Meanwhile a total 2,412 new cases have been confirmed, bringing the total number of infections to 248,818.

Just over 10,000 people are currently hospitalised with the virus, down from 11,716 this time last week.

The government confirmed 89,784 tests for the virus have been carried out across the latest 24 hour period - falling below the government's target to be conducting more than 100,000 on a daily basis yet again.

Professor Dame Angela McLean, deputy chief scientific adviser, said there was a "sustained decline across all four of our nations" in the numbers of Covid-19 hospital patients requiring mechanical ventilation - a marker of those who have been worst affected after contracting the virus.

Talking viewers through the presentation slides at the daily briefing, Dame Angela also said there was a continued "steady decline" in the number of coronavirus-associated deaths demonstrated in the published data.

It comes as the government seeks to emerge from lockdown with a contact tracing operation capable of fully tracking and containing the future spread of the virus - which has claimed the lives of at least 320,816 people globally.

Responding to a question from a member of the public on lessons learned from other nations, Dame Anglea said the UK will try to emulate South Korea's response to the virus in the coming months.

She said: "It's a very good point that we need to look to our near neighbours and also countries further away to learn what works and how long it takes to see if something is working or not working.

"The two I would draw particular lessons from would be South Korea, where I feel they've made inspiring use of all kinds of different contact tracing in order to control infection to an extent that they are now down to a handful of new cases every day, and when they say new cases they mean people they have found in the community because of their contact tracing efforts.

"I think that is an experience that we are aiming to emulate.

"The other country I would look to is Germany, where the importance of testing has always been so clear and that is a place from where we have learned that we need to grow our testing facility, and have grown our testing facility."

Additional reporting by Press Association.