Another 360 deaths have been recorded of people in UK hospitals who tested positive for coronavirus – the lowest one-day total since 31 March.

The tally, which covers deaths reported between 5pm on Saturday and 5pm on Sunday, brings the official total of hospital fatalities to 21,092.

Although recorded death numbers are always lower at weekends, health chiefs hope the latest tally is part of a downward trend.

During the previous one-day period, from Friday evening to Saturday, 413 deaths were recorded.

“We must never lose sight of the human cost of coronavirus and the pain and the grief that it causes,” health secretary Matt Hancock said.

More than 15,050 people were in hospital with coronavirus on Monday, down from 15,239 on Sunday.

There were 3,190 spare critical care beds, and 42 per cent of oxygen-supported beds in the NHS now lay empty, Mr Hancock announced.

“In most parts of the country, the number of people in hospital with coronavirus is beginning to fall,” he said at Monday’s press briefing.

Prof David Leon, professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: “The low numbers of Covid-19 total deaths reported today for England are consistent with a steady decline that has been observed since the peak on 8 April. Although there might be a small contribution from reporting delays due to the weekend, this does not affect the overall picture that there is a real downward trend.”

Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, said the country was not “consistently” past the peak of coronavirus deaths.

There was still a “very long way to run”, he said, as he was asked about the expected death total the UK might face.

The chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance had suggested that keeping the death toll below 20,000 would be a good outcome, but that total has been surpassed in hospitals alone.

“We need to view this epidemic over the long run and this has got a very long way to run,” Prof Whitty said.

“I’m really cautious about putting out these kind of absolute numbers, because this could go in a lot of different ways over the next many months – until such time as we have a clear exit that has a vaccine or drugs or some other route that allows us to be able to say we now can stop people dying from this.”

Mr Hancock announced that some NHS services that had been paused because of the pandemic will be restored from Tuesday, starting with cancer care and mental health support.

“The exact pace of the restoration will be determined by local circumstances on the ground, according to local need and according to the amount of coronavirus cases that that hospital is having to deal with.”