ONE more person has died at St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust after contracting coronavirus.

The latest NHS data show that one patient died at the trust on Tuesday, June 9.

This means the trust, which runs Whiston, St Helens and Newton hospitals, has recorded 202 coronavirus-related deaths since the start of the outbreak.

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At the latest count, a further 70 people have died in hospitals in England, including 23 in the North West – the highest in the country.

Patients were aged between 24 and 102 years old.  Three patients, aged between 78 and 102, had no known underlying health conditions.

In addition, 18 deaths were recorded where COVID-19 was listed on the patient’s death certificate, despite them not testing positive for the virus.

Today’s figures bring the total number of confirmed reported deaths in hospitals in England to 27,860.

The hospital data is published by NHS England and NHS Improvement every day and includes confirmed death cases reported at 5pm the previous day.

Cases are only included in the data when a positive COVID-19 test result is received, or where COVID-19 is documented as a direct or underlying cause of death on the death certificate.

This results in a lag between a given date of death and the daily death figures for that day, meaning reported deaths may have occurred several days or event weeks prior to them being reported.

These figures do not include deaths outside hospital, such as those in care homes.

At least 76 deaths have been linked to coronavirus in the borough’s care homes.

NHS England and NHS Improvement do not publish recovery figures, however, Public Health England data shows that 760 people had been confirmed as testing positive for COVID-19 by 9am on June 11 in St Helens.

This had risen from 757 the same time on Wednesday.

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The rate of infection in St Helens stands at 422.1 per 100,000 of the population. This remains one of the highest in the country, based on its cumulative total, although the number of new infections has slowed considerably in recent weeks.

In Knowsley, there has been 673 confirmed cases, a rate of 450 per 100,000 people.

Cumulative case counts include patients who are currently unwell, have recovered and those that have died.