Almost half of all deaths – 44 per cent – occurred in London, followed by the south-east and the West Midlands on 13 per cent each.

However, compared with the size of their populations, death rates were similar in London and the south-east, followed by the north-west, east, and West Midlands. Around one in 14 coronavirus-related deaths were recorded as occurring at home, in hospices or care homes.

The ONS stressed that this is only preliminary analysis, and the figures are just for England and Wales covering one week of data.

NHS records now show 1,649 deaths by 27 March. The figure is larger than was stated at that time because many of the deaths were reported belatedly by hospitals.

The difference between the 786 new deaths announced by the Department of Health on Tuesday and the combined total of new deaths announced by health authorities in the four nations of the UK, 854, is due to the difference in how and when the data is collected and reported.

Neither of the figures is an accurate measure of how many deaths have occurred in Britain since Monday. For example, one of the deaths announced by NHS England happened nearly three weeks ago, on March 19.

The total number of people in the UK tested for coronavirus since the outbreak began – 213,181 as of 9am on April 7 – is the equivalent of around 320 people in every 100,000, or 0.3 per cent of the population. Of these, 55,242 tested positive.

Some patients need to be tested more than once in order to confirm a suspected case.

Overall, 266,694 tests have been concluded, with 14,006 tests carried out on Monday, up from around 9,000 a week before.

These tests look for the presence of the virus at the time. For the last 10 days, they have been increasingly offered to NHS staff as well as hospital patients.

Two weeks ago, health officials said more than 3.5 million antibody tests had been purchased and would be available within days, allowing key workers to return to employment.

But earlier this week, the Government's scientific adviser said the tests could not be introduced for at least a month.