Coronavirus deaths in UK rise by 151 to 41,279
The UK experienced another 151 coronavirus deaths yesterday, official data confirmed today.
The Department of Health and Social Care’s official data showed 151 more people died to bring the UK’s total number of official coronavirus deaths to 41,279.
That is substantially lower than a Reuters tally placing the overall UK toll closer to 52,000, including suspected cases.
The UK counted a further 1,266 coronavirus infections by 9am today to bring the total number of cases so far to 291,409.
It comes as new data from the Department of Health and Social Care showed almost 30,000 people self-isolated in England as a part of the new test and trace programme in its first week.
Out of 8,117 people who tested positive for Covid-19 between 28 and 3 June, 5,407 provided details to the NHS’ contact tracers of people they had been in close contact with.
This saw the NHS attempt to contact 31,794 people to tell them to self-isolate for 14 days.
Just over 85 per cent – 26,985 people – agreed to self-isolate when contacted.
The further 15 per cent either could not be contacted or they refused to self-isolate, despite having been in close contact with someone that had tested positive for coronavirus.
The government’s test and trace tsar Baroness Dido Harding said today that “we are not at the golden standard yet”, but that the system was “fit for purpose as we stand today and we’ll get better for the summer”.
“I think we’re where we said we would be,” she said.
“We have a functioning service just and as the infection rate is coming down our ability to test and trace is growing.”