The number of people who have died from coronavirus in the UK has risen to 30,076, Downing Street has confirmed.
The coronavirus death toll in the UK is now the highest in Europe, and the second highest worldwide.
It comes as the Prime Minister was asked in Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions “how on earth did it come to this?” in relation to the UK’s coronavirus death toll.
NHS England medical director Professor Stephen Powis and chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, had said earlier in the outbreak that a death toll of below 20,000 would be “a good outcome”.
The latest data on Covid-19 testing showed a decrease in the number of daily tests being carried out since 100,000 were carried out at the end of April.
In Wednesday’s daily coronavirus briefing, it was announced just 69,463 coronavirus tests were carried out across Tuesday – the fourth day in a row the figure has been below 100,000.
Last week Matt Hancock claimed the government had met its target of 100,000 tests a day by the end of April but testing has not reached that number again since.
Questions have been raised over how the 100,000 tests were counted after 27,497 home test kits – which had not yet been returned – were included in the figure.
Of the latest UK death toll, 331 virus-related deaths occurred in hospitals in England – bringing the death toll there to 22,049.
