UK coronavirus death toll rises to 26,771 after including care home fatalities

Prime minister declares country is ‘past peak’ of outbreak and ‘on downward slope’

The UK’s coronavirus death toll has risen by 674 in the last 24-hours, Boris Johnson has announced at his first government briefing since he was hospitalised with Covid-19.

The prime minister said the figure, which includes deaths in hospitals, care homes and the wider community, had reached 26,711, however the Department of Health and Social Care later confirmed it had actually reached 26,771.

Mr Johnson said: “Families every day are continuing to lose loved ones before their time, we grieve for them and with them, but as we grieve, we are strengthened in our resolve to defeat this virus to get this whole country back to health, back on its feet.”

He also declared the UK was “past the peak” of the outbreak and added “we are on a downward slope”.

“At no stage has our NHS been overwhelmed, no patient went without a ventilator, no patient was deprived of intensive care, we have five of the seven projected Nightingale wards,” he said.

“It is thanks to that massive collective effort to shield the NHS that we avoided an uncontrollable and catastrophic epidemic where the reasonable worst-case scenario was 500,000 deaths.

“I can confirm today that for the first time we are past the peak of this disease.

“We are past the peak and on the downward slope.”

Mr Johnson also set out the latest figures on the epidemic:

• Ahead of today’s deadline for carrying out 100,000 tests a day, 81,611 were performed on Wednesday.
• 171,253 people have tested positive overall, an increase of 6,032 since Wednesday.
• 15,043 coronavirus patients are in hospital, down from 15,359.
• There have been 26,711 deaths in all settings, an increase of 674 since yesterday.

Mr Johnson acknowledged the difficulties the public has suffered during “enforced confinement” where they have not been able to see friends and family while worrying about jobs.

“Your effort and your sacrifice is working and has been proved to work,” he said.

Mr Johnson said he would set out a “road map” for easing lockdown restrictions next week.

“What you are going to get next week is really a road map, a menu of options – the dates and times of each individual measure will be very much driven by where we are in the epidemic, what the data is really saying and we are getting in a lot more data every day now and in the course of the next few days.”

The PM said he “mourned for every life lost” and also the “economic damage the country is sustaining”.

But he predicted a “bad” second coronavirus peak would do “lasting” damage to the UK economy if lockdown measures were lifted too quickly.

“It is absolutely vital, if we’re to bounce back as strongly as I think we can, that we don’t have a second bout or second bad spike,” he said.

“Because that would really do the lasting economic damage.

“That’s why we have to calibrate our measures so carefully and make sure we not only unlock the economy gradually, but also find ways of continuing to suppress the disease, and possibly find new, more ingenious ways of suppressing the disease.

“That’s what we are working on now and you’ll be seeing a lot more of that, I hope, next week.”