The UK has recorded 341 deaths from coronavirus today, this is a 26 percent drop from last week’s 462 deaths. The number of infections also fell from 26,860 last Saturday to 19,875 today. Today 1,682 people with coronavirus were admitted to hospital. This figure marks a drop from yesterday’s data which showed a daily rise in cases, there were 20,252 cases recorded and 511 deaths.
The patients who died of coronavirus in England today were aged between 28 and 102.
All but five of the fatalities had underlying symptoms.
Five patients who died between the ages of 64 and 96, had no known underlying health conditions.
The Scottish Government recorded 37 more deaths from coronavirus in the past 24 hours.
The rapid test will be offered to people who have come in contact with those infected with the virus, if they get a negative result they will be able to come out of quarantine.
Professor Calum Semple of the University of Liverpool, speaking to The Times, said plans for mass testing would release many key workers from quarantine.
He said: “If we use lateral flow tests on a daily basis, we can completely avoid quarantine.
“If you take a fire truck with six people and the driver is Covid-positive, then five people sitting behind him have to go into quarantine for 14 days.
“That’s quite a crude, arbitrary 14 days.
“So we can take the other five people and give them a new driver, and give the rest of them multipacks of lateral low tests to use each morning before the shift.
“And we can keep that fire truck on the road.”
