Eight Things You Need To Know About Coronavirus Today
Updated: See the latest stories on the coronavirus outbreak.
Hundreds of Britons are believed to be trapped on a cruise ship where four people have died after passengers tested positive for coronavirus, and more than 100,000 cases of the virus have been confirmed in the US.
The latest official figures, published on Saturday afternoon, show:
At least 14,579 people have tested positive for coronavirus in the UK.
1,019 people are now confirmed to have died across Britain and Northern Ireland as of 5pm on Friday – an increase of 260 on the previous 24 hours.
Of those, two more people died in Northern Ireland (total 15), four in Wales (total 38) and seven in Scotland (total 40).
On Saturday evening, it was confirmed a further 14 patients with Covid-19 have died in Ireland taking the death toll in the country to 36. All 14 people who died were located in the east of the country. The average age of those who died was 81. A further 294 cases of coronavirus were reported on Saturday, bringing to 2,415 the number of confirmed cases in Ireland.
Here’s the latest:
Keeping coronavirus deaths under 20,000 will be a “good result” and we will have “done very well” says NHS medical director
If the death toll in the UK from coronavirus is kept below 20,000, “we will have done very well”, and it will be a “good result” said NHS England medical director Prof Stephen Powis.
Powis said the virus will start to decline in the population, but only if “we all comply with the measures and reduce that amount of transmission”.
He says it will take up to a month to see how quickly the number of deaths will fall and how effective the current strategy is.
Although Powis agreed with the government’s chief scientific advisor Sir Patrick Vallence that deaths of under 20,000 would be a good result, he added: “Every death is absolutely a tragedy.”
He said it was imperative that people complied with all the measures. “Now is the time to really, really...
