FOUR more people who tested positive for coronavirus have died at St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.

The latest NHS figures shows that three people died on Saturday, May 2 and one person died on Sunday, May 3.

This means the trust, which runs Whiston, St Helens and Knowsley hospitals, has now registered 157 coronavirus-related deaths.

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Across the country, a further 204 people who tested positive for COVID-19 have died, bringing the total number of confirmed reported deaths in hospitals in England to 21,384.

Patients were aged between 26 and 101 years old.

Three of the 204 patients, aged between 41 and 58 years old, had no known underlying health condition.

All of these deaths were patients who have died in hospitals in England and had tested positive for COVID-19.

In addition, 10 hospital deaths have been reported where there was no positive test result but where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.

The figures are updated by NHS England each day and include confirmed death cases reported at 5pm the previous day.

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

However, the government has started reporting on deaths across all settings following mounting pressure to report on the growing crisis in the care sector.

Across the UK, as of 5pm on May 5, of those tested positive for coronavirus, 28,446 have died.

As of 9am on May 3, 882,343 people have been tested of whom 186,599 tested positive.

The deaths reported by the government only include those people who tested positive for COVID-19 and not those where the virus was mentioned on the death certificate or suspected to be a factor in a person’s death.

At least 47 deaths that occurred in care homes in St Helens have been linked to coronavirus, according to St Helens Council.

As of 9am on Sunday morning, 660 people had been confirmed as testing positive for COVID-19 in St Helens, according to Public Health England.

Meanwhile, 566 cases have been confirmed in Knowsley.

The infection rate for both areas continue to be among the highest in England, with St Helens currently trailing Knowsley.

Neither NHS England nor the government currently releases recovery figures.

Some hospital trusts publish the number of people they have discharged after contracting coronavirus but St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has yet to do this.