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

The latest NHS figures show that two people died on Sunday, May 24, and two people on Monday, May 25.

Since the outbreak began, 189 deaths linked to COVID-19 have been recorded by the trust, which runs Whiston, St Helens and Newton hospitals.

NHS England and NHS Improvement provides information on all coronavirus-related (suspected and confirmed) deaths in England hospitals.

The figures are updated every day and include 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, which results in a lag between a given date of death and the daily death figures for that day.

Across the UK, more than 37,000 people who tested positive for COVID-19 have died across all settings.

At the latest count, a further 183 people who tested positive for COVID-19 have died hospitals in England, with 44 in the North West – the highest in the country.

Patients were aged between 43 and 101 years old. Two of the 183 patients, aged 81 and 91, had no known underlying health condition.

In addition, 24 deaths, including eight in the North West, were reported where there was no positive COVID-19 test result.

The NHS figures do not include deaths outside hospital, such as those in care homes or in private homes.

NHS England and NHS Improvement do not publish recovery figures.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service has asked St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust to provide figures on the number of people who have been discharged from its hospitals after testing positive for COVID-19, but the trust has not yet released this information.

On Tuesday, political leaders across the Liverpool City Region warned the fight against coronavirus was far from over, with the area still experiencing higher than average infection and mortality rates.

In St Helens, Public Health England figures show 752 people have tested positive for COVID-19 by 9am on May 26 since the start of the outbreak, up from 750 the same time on Monday.

A week earlier, there were 728 cases.

Across the UK, 265,227 people have tested positive for COVID-19 as of 9am on Tuesday, according to the Department of Health and Social Care.