UK coronavirus hospital death toll rises to 19,506 after 684 more recorded in 24 hours

Meanwhile, government testing site crashes as it is overwhelmed with new bookings

At least 19,506 people have died after testing positive for coronavirus at hospitals in the UK, the Department of Health has announced, after 684 deaths were recorded in the last 24 hours.

Some 444,222 people have been tested for Covid-19, of which 143,464 tested positive, as of 9am on Friday.

Overall, 612,031 tests have concluded, with 28,532 tests carried out on Thursday.

It comes as the government’s coronavirus testing website crashed after it was overwhelmed as it opened to new bookings on Friday.

Home testing kits ran out within two minutes of the site going live.

Up to 10 million key workers and their households are now eligible for the tests if they have symptoms.

The expansion includes NHS and social care staff, police officers, teachers, social workers, undertakers, journalists and those who work in supermarkets and food production.

Boris Johnson’s spokesperson said: “Within two minutes of the portal opening this morning, 5,000 testing kits had been ordered. And that’s the available capacity for today.”

The prime minister’s spokesperson also said that up to 18,000 home testing kits per day will be available by the end of next week.

Another 15,000 tests are anticipated to take place at the drive-through centres on Friday, they added.

The shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, said ministers should have been prepared for an increased demand for coronavirus tests after the government expanded their eligibility.

“We have long called for ministers to properly prepare a testing strategy to deliver the levels of diagnostics needed,” he said.

“The fact the website crashed in minutes reveals the extent of the demand that ministers should have prepared for. Questions will need answering as to why this happened, what mechanisms are in place to ensure everyone who needs a test gets one quickly and whether a workable tracing strategy is being prepared.”

Meanwhile, Matt Hancock said easing the UK’s lockdown would depend on the speed at which the number of new Covid-19 cases falls, a factor he said is as yet “unknown”.

The number of new cases is being tracked through hospital admissions, a new testing study in the community announced on Wednesday, and data that will be gathered from people coming forward for tests under an expansion of the testing programme, Mr Hancock said.

However, he suggested there is no prospect of easing the lockdown yet, and that coronavirus cases need to drop substantially before the next phase of isolating infected people and their contacts can be truly effective.

“Now that we’re at the peak, and we very much hope that things will start to slow down ... When they do, then the speed in which the number of new cases reduces will frankly determine how long we need to keep the measures on,” Mr Hancock told Radio 4’s Today programme.

He said it was not quite the case that mass testing and contact tracing needed to be in place before the current restrictions are eased, but said contact tracing worked better when the number of infections was pushed right down.

“The truth is that we need to get the number of new cases down, right down, and the lower you go, the more effective contact tracing is because the more resources you can put into each individual case that gets a positive test.

“You can really make sure you can get hold of all of their contacts and get them, in many cases, to self-isolate.

“The smaller the number of new cases, the more effective the test, track and trace system will be.”

Social-distancing was driving down the numbers, Mr Hancock said, adding that the contact tracing operation would be functioning in a “matter of weeks”. He said mass testing, contact tracing and a new contact tracing app “are so crucial to holding down the rate and level of transmission of the disease”.