A CORONAVIRUS test-and-trace system will start tomorrow morning from 9am, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has announced.

At the Downing Street press conference, he said that the first people to be contacted will be those who got a positive test result today.

People who receive a call from a contact tracer have a “civic duty” to self-isolate whether they have symptoms of Covid-19 or not, Mr Hancock said.

Testing and tracing must become a new way of life until an effective vaccine or treatment is found, he added.

The government previously said that it aims to conduct 200,000 Covid-19 tests per day by the end of this week. But Mr Hancock revealed that the testing capacity is currently at 161,000 tests a day.

He announced that, from tomorrow, eligibility for testing will be extended for children under five.

In the last 24 hours, 117,013 tests were delivered while 2,013 new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed, England’s deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van Tam said during the briefing.

The total number of people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in the UK stands at 267,240. The number of Covid-19 linked deaths recorded in the last 24 hours rose by 412 to 37,460.