The number of people in the UK who have died after testing positive for coronavirus has increased by 66 people in 24 hours.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said 45,119 people had died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for coronavirus in the UK as of 5pm on Wednesday – up by 66 from 45,053 the previous day.
The figures do not include all deaths involving coronavirus across the UK, which is thought to have now passed 55,500.
The DHSC also said that in the 24-hour period up to 9am on Thursday, there had been a further 642 lab-confirmed UK cases.
Overall, a total of 292,552 cases have been confirmed.
Today's rise in deaths is down from a week ago, where there was a rise of 85.
It comes as the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said the outcome of the coronavirus pandemic in the UK has "not been good."
Sir Patrick told the Science and Technology Committee there will be "many factors" that determine how well countries respond to the outbreak.
He said: “As (chief medical officer Professor) Chris Whitty has said before, it’s very difficult to know where we stand at the moment.
“It’s clear that the outcome has not been good in the UK, I think you can be absolutely clear about that.
“It is clear you can see a band of countries that have done less well in the temperate zone.
"Countries that are very well connected internationally, countries that have got population structures of a certain type.
“There are many factors that are going to play in this as we look and say, ‘what is it that makes some countries having done worse than others?’, and there will be decisions made that will turn out not to have been the right decisions at the time.”
A further 19 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths in hospitals to 29,144, NHS England said.
The patients were aged between 52 and 91 and all patients had known underlying conditions.
Another 10 deaths were reported with no positive Covid-19 test result.
There are no new deaths of people who tested positive for coronavirus in Wales, with the number remaining at 1,545, Public Health Wales said.
The total number of cases in Wales increased by 18, bringing the revised total of confirmed cases to 16,871.
