TWO more people at St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust have died after contracting coronavirus.

The latest data from NHS England show that two people died at the trust on Monday, May 4 and one person died on May 5.

This means the death toll at the trust, which runs Whiston, St Helens and Newton hospitals, now stands at 163.

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At least 51 deaths in the borough’s care homes have been linked to coronavirus, based on death notifications provided to St Helens Council by care providers.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) also produce statistics on care home deaths but there is some disparity between the datasets due to the different methods and timeframes used.

Coronavirus is also known to have been involved in the deaths of four people in St Helens who died at home, according to the ONS.

The overall mortality rate does appear to be slowing in St Helens, which is in line with Boris Johnson’s claims last week that the UK was “past the peak” of the coronavirus outbreak.

Currently, the coronavirus mortality rate in St Helens is 38 per 100,000, ranking the borough as the 106th highest out of 316 local authority areas.

Across England, the latest NHS data shows that a further 331 people who tested positive for COVID-19 have died.

Patients were aged between 32 and 102 years old.

Out of the 331 patients, 17 of them, aged between 46 and 88 years old, had no known underlying health condition.

The latest figures brings the total number of confirmed reported deaths in hospitals in England to 22,049, which has been revised down slightly due to an error by NHS England.

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

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

NHS England also reports on the number of patients who did not have a positive test result but where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.

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At the latest count, there were 33 deaths recorded across England where the patient had not tested positive for COVID-19.

Neither NHS England nor the government currently releases recovery figures.

St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has not said how many patients it has discharged after contracting coronavirus.