Coronavirus: 10,000 people could be getting infected each day, Matt Hancock admits

Health secretary also urges members of the public to download the long-delayed NHS tracing app launched today

Matt Hancock has suggested up to 10,000 people a day could be contracting coronavirus, as he urged members of the public to download the long-delayed NHS tracing app that was finally launched today.

It comes after the UK officially recorded 6,178 infections of the virus on Wednesday – the highest daily increase since 1 May – and 37 more deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test.

Speaking to Sky News, the health secretary said: "The massive testing capability we've got helps to find where the virus is so, if you think about it, yesterday we had a figure that there is over 6,000 people who have tested positive in the previous 24 hours.

"And that is comparable to the highest levels in the peak in terms of the number of people who were tested positive but back then we estimate through surveys that over 100,000 people a day were catching the disease, but we only found around 6,000 of them and they tested positive.

"Now we estimate that it is under 10,000 people a day getting the disease - that's too high but it is still much lower than in the peak - and through the mass testing we have and the quarter-of-a-million capacity, we found yesterday over 6,000 of them.”

In an attempt to curb the rising transmission rate of the virus, the government imposed stricter restriction on public life earlier this week, including a 10pm curfews on entertainment and urging office workers to work from home.

However, professor John Edmunds, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said the new measures will not go far enough in reducing the epidemic.

He claimed the curfew was likely to have a “trivial” effect and “a very large range of measures” was still needed "as fast as possible" to stop the rate of transmission from growing.  

Mr Hancock also used a series of interviews on Thursday to urge the public to download the NHS Test and Trace app, claiming the more people that install the programme “the more effective it will be”.

The cabinet minister added that the “vast majority” of people had the right software, but said some may need to upgrade their phone’s operating system to download the app, which aims to tell people if they have been in close contact with somebody infected with Covid-19 and whether they need to self-isolate.

"Now, that self-isolation is voluntary, unlike at the moment, where it's mandatory to self-isolate if you are told to by NHS Test and Trace,” Mr Hancock told BBC Breakfast. "But if you need the support the financial support to self-isolate, then you can click through and declare that."