UK coronavirus death toll rises by 149 to 43,230

Total of 307,980 people confirmed as positive since start of pandemic, according to data from Department of Health

The UK death toll from coronavirus has risen by 149 in the past 24 hours, the government has said.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said 43,230 people had now died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for the disease in the UK, as of 5pm on Wednesday.

This tally only accounts for those who have tested positive for Covid-19. The latest Office for National Statistics figures, which includes all fatalities in which Covid-19 is on the death certificate, suggests the true toll is above 54,000.

The DHSC also said in the 24-hour period up to 9am on Thursday, 167,023 tests were carried out or dispatched, with 1,118 positive results. Overall, a total of 8,710,292 tests have been carried out and 307,980 cases have been confirmed positive.

The figure for the number of people tested has been “temporarily paused to ensure consistent reporting” across all methods of testing.

This comes as authorities announced that the rate of spread for Covid-19 and the R number are unchanged from last week.

The growth rate remains at minus 4 per cent to minus 2 per cent per day while the reproduction number, referred to as R, remains at 0.7 to 0.9.

Both figures are unchanged from when they were published by the Government Office for Science and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies on Friday.

However, there have been slight changes in the regional data.

While the R value for England remains at 0.7 to 0.9, the growth rate has changed from minus 4 per cent to minus 1 per cent, to minus 5 per cent to minus 2 per cent.

The growth rate reflects how quickly the number of infections is changing day by day, and, as the number of infections decreases, is more reliable way of keeping track of the virus.

If the growth rate is greater than zero, and therefore positive, then the disease will grow, and if the growth rate is less than zero, then the disease will shrink.

It is an approximation of the change in the number of infections each day and the size of the growth rate indicates the speed of change.

The R value of the disease indicates the average number of people an infected person is likely to pass it on to.

R estimates do not indicate how quickly an epidemic is changing and different diseases with the same R can result in epidemics that grow at very different speeds.