The number of people who have died in the UK after testing positive for coronavirus has risen by 89.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said 43,995 people had died in the nation's hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for the disease as of 5pm on Wednesday.
The Government's official figures do not include all deaths involving Covid-19 across the UK, which are thought to have passed 54,000.
Of today's figures, a further 35 deaths occurred in England's hospitals, according to Public Health England (PHE), while Wales saw another eight, and Scotland and Northern Ireland each reported one.
The DHSC also confirmed that another 576 people had tested positive for the virus, taking the total number of cases in the country to date to 283,757.
In the 24-hour period up to 9am on Thursday, 252,084 tests were carried out or dispatched, according to the department.
Overall, a total of 9,914,663 tests have been carried out.
In other developments on Thursday:
– Education Secretary Gavin Williamson announced plans for getting all pupils back to school in England in September.
– Official figures showed 74 per cent of people who have taken a home test for Covid-19 have waited longer than 48 hours for the result.
– NHS Test and Trace figures showed 27,125 people who tested positive for the disease had their case transferred to the system in its first four weeks of operation but just 74 per cent of them were reached and asked to provide details of recent contacts.
– Around 25,000 people in England – 0.04 per cent of the population – had Covid-19 at any given time between June 14 and June 27, according to Office for National Statistics estimates.
– Plans to draw up a list of countries to be exempted from quarantine requirements have become the subject of a dispute between the Governments in Westminster and Holyrood, with Scotland’s Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf claiming there had been a lack of consultation with the devolved administrations.
