Covid death toll reduced after recount

The Department of Health says it has concluded its urgent review into how deaths from Covid-19 are calculated in England.

It follows concerns that people who died months after contracting the virus were being included in the figures – and whether that could result in a misleading picture of the extent of the epidemic in the UK.

The official number of UK deaths has risen by 77 in 24 hours.

There were 1,009 new coronavirus cases, the third time in a week that daily infections have risen by more than a thousand.