The number of coronavirus deaths in the UK has surged (Picture: Rex)

The coronavirus death toll in the UK has reached 233 after NHS England said a further 53 people had died from the disease.

Earlier, Wales recorded two new deaths and Scotland recorded one, meaning fatalities jumped by 56 from yesterday, when the death toll was 177.

More than 5,000 people have now tested positive for Covid-19 in the UK.There has been a rise in the number of confirmed cases by 1,035 in a day to 5,018.

Wales confirmed its largest daily increase of coronavirus cases after 89 more people tested positive in the country today, while 22 new cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in Northern Ireland, bringing the total number of cases there to 108.




In Scotland, a total of 373 people have now tested positive for the infection, with cases increasing by 51 over the last 24 hours to Saturday.

Today’s updated coronavirus statistics for the UK (Picture: Metro.co.uk)

A woman wears a mask outside St Enoch subway station on March 21, 2020 in Glasgow, Scotland (Picture: Getty)

To cope with an expected surge in cases, nearly 20,000 fully qualified staff will be joining the health service’s response to the pandemic. NHS England has struck a deal with independent hospitals that will see thousands more beds, ventilators and extra healthcare staff made available to help fight coronavirus and deliver other urgent operations and cancer treatments.

The new figures come as pubs, bars, shops and leisure centres shut their doors for the foreseeable future in a bid to slow the spread of the disease.

Drinkers across the country flocked to their local pub last night for one last blow out, in defiance of Boris Johnson’s instructions to the nation not to do so.

At a Downing Street press conference the PM asked venues to close ‘as soon as they reasonably can’ on Friday and to not open up again on Saturday. In a plea to the public he said: ‘Some people may of course be tempted to go out tonight and I say to you please don’t. You may think that you are invincible but there is no guarantee that you will get mild symptoms and you can still be a carrier of the disease and pass it on to others.’

Drinkers hit the streets of Birmingham after Boris Johnson ordered the closure of pubs and clubs (Picture:SnapperSK)

London’s empty West End after the government enforced a shutdown of all non-essential public places (Picture: Rex)

But the ‘inalienable free-born right of people born in England to go to the pub’ Johnson spoke of clearly resonated with quite a few people who rushed straight to the bar after hearing the news.

For all the latest news and updates on Coronavirus, click here.

For our Coronavirus live blog click here.

It is not clear how long social distancing measures will last, although top scientists have said the measures must be in place for at least a year to to avoid one big peak and keep the number of critical care beds within capacity.

Already one hospital in London declared a critical incident after running out of intensive care beds due to a surge in coronavirus patients.

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

Doctors in Italy have warned of the catastrophic scale of the crisis they are dealing with. They told the UK to ‘get ready’ after the country recorded its biggest daily death toll,with a further 627 Covid-19 patients dying yesterday. That record was surpassed today, when a further 793 people lost their battle against the disease.



Earlier this week Italy overtook China as the country to register most deaths from the deadly disease. Some 3,245 people have died in China since the virus first emerged there late last year, compared to 4,032 in Italy.

The gruesome milestone is being blamed on a perfect storm of Italy’s elderly population, its overwhelmed healthcare system, and the delayed lockdown of the outbreak’s epicentre in Lombardy.

In further grim developments, Spain’s death toll surpassed 1,000 yesterday. It is now the fourth hardest hit country in the world after Italy, the new epicentre of the disease, China, and Iran.

The global death toll has now exceeded 10,000, according to Johns Hopkins University, in the US.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.