THE UK should be braced for further increases in the number of coronavirus-linked care-home deaths, the daily Downing Street press conference heard today.

Public Health England medical director Professor Yvonne Doyle said the figure for deaths in care homes may be revised upwards.

She told the press conference: “In due course those deaths sadly may occur on death certificates, so we may expect more than we are seeing at the moment, yes.”

The news comes after Health Secretary Matt Hancock rejected claims that the government had sacrificed people in care homes in order to protect the NHS during the pandemic.

But he acknowledged that a lack of capacity meant it had not been possible to test everyone leaving hospitals for Covid-19 before they went into a care home.

The overall official UK death toll has now reached 30,076, according to the latest data.

This includes people who died in hospital, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for coronavirus as of 5pm on Tuesday — up by 649 from 29,427 the day before.

The coronavirus death toll in the UK is now the highest in Europe, although government officials repeatedly warned against comparing countries’ figures like-for-like.

Prof Doyle said that it could be “probably a year” before comparisons could be drawn between death and infection rates in different countries, due to the discrepancies in the ways countries record data.

Deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said during the press conference: “In epidemiology terms, eventually we will be able to compute a different estimate of deaths called excess deaths.

“That will be highly comparable when other excess death figures come out across the world, including many parts of Europe.”

According to analysis by the Financial Times, the number of excess deaths in the UK attributable to the coronavirus had passed 42,000 by April 24.