The UK now has the highest coronavirus death toll in Europe, according to the latest government figures.
The Department of Health announced a rise of 693 to 29,437, surpassing the latest death toll in Italy, which now stands at 29,315.
Italy had been the worst affected country in Europe up until now, but the government moved to dismiss “international comparisons” of coronavirus death tolls.
At Tuesday’s daily government briefing on the coronavirus outbreak, Dominic Raab said: “In terms of the comparison you’re suggesting… I don’t think we’ll get a real verdict on how well countries have done until the pandemic is over and particularly until we’ve got comprehensive international data on all cause of mortality.”
In his defence of the government, Mr Raab said there are different ways of counting deaths from the virus.
“We now publish data that includes all deaths in all settings and not all countries do that so I’m not sure that the international comparison works unless you reliably know that all countries are measuring in the same way,” he said.
“And it also depends on how good frankly countries are at gathering their statistics and our own Office for National Statistics is widely acknowledged as a world leader.”
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