THE number of people who have died with coronavirus in the UK has passed 26,000, as official figures include deaths in the community, such as in care homes, for the first time.
The foreign secretary said this did not represent “a sudden surge”, as the figure includes deaths since 2 March.
Dominic Raab also warned the UK was at a “dangerous moment”, saying that the peak of the virus had not passed.
The total only includes people who died after testing positive for coronavirus.
Meanwhile, figures show 52,429 coronavirus tests were carried out on Tuesday, still short of the government’s target of 100,000 tests per day by Thursday.
The total number of coronavirus deaths in the UK is 26,097, Public Health England said, including an additional 3,811 deaths in England since the start of the outbreak.
Of these, around 70% were outside hospital settings and around 30% were in hospital.
There were 765 deaths reported in the 24 hours to 17:00 BST on Tuesday.
The shadow minister for social care, Liz Kendall, said Wednesday’s figures “show that further action is urgently required to reduce the spread of the virus and keep care users and staff safe”.
At the Downing Street briefing, the BBC’s health editor Hugh Pym asked why testing in care homes had not started sooner.
Mr Raab said such a move would have required “enormous testing capacity”.
He said that the government had expanded eligibility to include “anyone in a care home whether resident or staff”, but admitted there had been “a distribution issue”.
“There is no sugar coating the challenge we have had with that,” he said.
However, Mr Raab said the government was now doing “everything that we possibly can” to improve supply and delivery.
Care home residents and staff, people over 65 and anyone who cannot work at home are now among millions able to apply for a coronavirus test if they have symptoms, under the government’s expanded testing programme.
The expansion in eligibility beyond just essential workers and hospital patients means 25 million people can now book through the government’s test-booking website.
Some 14,700 home tests and 33,000 drive-through appointments were booked on Wednesday.
Asked whether deaths might have been avoided with better testing in care homes, Mr Raab said there was “always learning in an unprecedented crisis like this”.
“The key thing above all is to manage the ebb and flow of people into those care homes that might carry the virus,” he said.
PHE’s medical director, Prof Yvonne Doyle, said there had always been intervention where there have been outbreaks in care homes.
She said officials had “learned a lot about how the virus is behaving in different populations”, including how coronavirus affects people over 75.
