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The North East Ambulance Service has responded to speculation of a suspected case of coronavirus in Newcastle.

Rumours were building on social media on Saturday morning after a large ambulance service presence was seen at around 10am in Kenton Bar .

Ambulances were joined by multiple incident response units with witnesses claiming to see residents being tested for the coronavirus.

The Department of Health & Social Care told ChronicleLive that it cannot comment on suspected coronavirus cases.

Meanwhile the North East Ambulance Service could not rule out the possibility that the incident was related to Covid-19.

A spokesperson said: "We can neither confirm nor deny that the incident is related to suspected coronavirus.

"The Department of Health is publishing regular updates on the number of tests carried out each day and whether those results are positive or negative."

It comes after a further three patients in England tested positive for the coronavirus, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the UK to 23.

(Image: Newcastle Chronicle)

Two of the patients had recently travelled back from Italy while the other had returned from Asia, chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty said.

The three cases - one in Gloucestershire, one in Hertfordshire and another in Berkshire - are being investigated and any individuals who had contact with the patients are now being traced.

As of 9am on Saturday, more than 10,000 people in the UK had been tested for the virus, also known as Covid-19 - with 23 confirmed as positive.

A teacher at Thorp Academy in Ryton tested negative for the disease on Friday after returning from a school skiing trip in Italy with flu-like symptoms.

A university student and their relative recently received treatment at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary after testing positive for coronavirus and were treated in the hospital's High Consequence Infectious Disease treatment centre.

The two Chinese nationals have since been discharged from hospital.

The three new cases on Saturday takes the total number in England up to 21, while there has been one confirmed case in Northern Ireland and one in Wales.

The number of people sickened by the virus climbed to more than 85,000 globally on Saturday and there were more than 2,850 deaths, most of them in China.