FREE now SUBSCRIBE Invalid email Make the most of your money by signing up to our newsletter fornow We will use your email address only for sending you newsletters. Please see our Privacy Notice for details of your data protection rights.

Mr Hancock said he wants to outline the next steps for tracing infections via an app, that will allow people to log their symptoms anonymously, data only to be used by NHS staff. Mr Hancock said: "Today I wanted to outline the next step: a new NHS app for contact tracing. "If you become unwell with the symptoms of coronavirus, you can securely tell this new NHS app and the app will then send an alert anonymously to other app users that you’ve been in significant contact with over the past few days, even before you had symptoms so that they know and can act accordingly. At this difficult time for frontline doctors and nurses, sign up here to show your support now to our brave NHS Heroes.

"All data will be handled according to the highest ethical and security standards, and would only be used for NHS care and research, and we won’t hold it any longer than it’s needed." "And as part of our commitment to transparency, we’ll be publishing the source code, too." Matt Hancock was asked about the delivery of PPE to NHS frontline staff. Mr Hancock says “we won’t rest” until everyone gets the necessary PPE delivered. JUST IN: Coronavirus map LIVE - Britain just DAYS from disaster - dire warning

Matt Hancock at today's press conference

Health Secretary Matt Hancock

This news comes as the Department of Health and Social Care has updated the total number of deaths from Covid-19 of people in hospitals in the UK to 10,612, as of 5pm Saturday, a daily rise of 737. On Saturday, there had been 9,875 hospital deaths recorded in the UK, with a day-on-day rise of 917. The department said that as of 9am 12 April, 352,974 tests have concluded, with 18,000 tests on 11 April, 282,374 people have been tested of which 84,279 tested positive. While the daily increase of deaths has slowed, it is unclear how high the actual daily death toll is, as many deaths are being reported days or even weeks after they have occurred.

Matt Hancock at the Downing Street press conference

Trending