Health

Coronavirus death toll rises by 413 as almost 25,000 new cases recorded


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further 413 people have died in the UK after contracting coronavirus.

The Government said that, as of 9am on Saturday, there had been a further 24,957 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK. This is a day-to-day increase of more than 1,000 from 23,287 on Friday.

It brings the total number of cases in the UK to 1,171,441.

Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies for deaths when Covid-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate, together with additional data on deaths that have occurred in recent days, show there have now been 64,000 deaths involving coronavirus in the UK.

It comes as Liverpool’s public health director said that mass testing for coronavirus is showing positive signs.

Thousands of people were tested on the first day of the pilot scheme.

Queues built up outside the new test centres which opened at midday on Friday, with people waiting around 45 minutes outside the Liverpool Tennis Centre – one of the six facilities – before it opened.

The programme aims to test up to 50,000 people a day once fully operational, Liverpool director of public health Matt Ashton said.

On Saturday, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It was the first day yesterday and we didn’t open first thing, we opened at lunchtime and had six of the asymptomatic testing centres open.

“We are still working on the numbers but we think (there were) about 1,500-2,000 people per testing centre, so really good numbers and really good interest, so it was very encouraging.”

He said he thought an English lockdown had been necessary because the Tier 3 restriction had not been getting coronavirus transmission under control “by itself”.



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