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Reuters
A five-year-old child with underlying health conditions is among those with coronavirus whose deaths were reported in the past day, Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove has said.
The latest figures show 4,313 people with the virus have now died in the UK – up by 708 on Friday’s figure.
Mr Gove said hundreds of ventilators were being manufactured every day and more had been sourced from abroad.
People have been warned to stay at home despite the warm weather this weekend.
Speaking alongside Mr Gove at the government’s daily briefing, NHS England medical director Stephen Powis said: “The sun might be out, but that does not mean you should be out.”
He said there is some evidence that social distancing measures are reducing transmission, and that the latest figures suggested new cases had begun to “stabilise”.
However, he stressed that there was “no room for complacency”.
During the briefing, Mr Gove paid tribute to one of the youngest victims of the outbreak.
“Our thoughts today are also with the family of the five-year-old with underlying health conditions who has tragically died,” he said.
Analysis
By Robert Cuffe, BBC News Head of Statistics
The recent trends in deaths (doubling roughly every 3.5 days) would have predicted about 800 deaths today.
Remember that doubling every few days means that we should expect to see record new highs regularly.
Scientists remind us to look for evidence that the growth is slowing down – the first step on the journey to falling numbers of deaths.
So, compared to that projection, there is a potential silver lining to these figures – if the pattern continues.
But one day of below-trend growth is far too soon to know for sure.
It takes over three weeks from infection to death to being reported in these figures.
So while we can hope to see the effects of pre-lockdown social distancing soon, it will take longer for the effect of the lockdown, announced on 23 March, to become apparent.