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

The latest NHS figures show that two people died on Saturday, May 23, after testing positive for coronavirus.

This means that since the outbreak began, 185 deaths linked to coronavirus have been recorded by the trust, which runs Whiston, St Helens and Newton hospitals.

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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.

This results in a lag between a given date of death and the daily death figures for that day.

At the latest count, a further 116 people who tested positive for the COVID-19 have died in hospitals in England.

Patients were aged between 50 and 100 years old.  One of the 116 patients, aged 71, had no known underlying health condition.

Today’s update brings the total number of confirmed reported deaths in hospitals in England to 25,866.

In addition, 16 deaths, including two in the North West, were reported where there was no positive COVID-19 test result.

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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NHS England and NHS Improvement do not publish recovery figures.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.