The theory flouted by Jeremy Corbyn’s brother Piers Corbyn and Brexit Party founder Catherine Blaiklock, among others, suggests the UK Government is keeping the facts about the pandemic under wraps. The claims, which are completely unfounded, have been circulating on social media as the country’s death count climbs higher each day.

Some theorists have even gone as far as suggesting there is no pandemic at all, and the current number of deaths in the UK is not out of the ordinary for an annual flu epidemic.

Mr Neil retweeted a “dramatic chart” which showed the UK’s weekly death toll was at its highest in the week leading up to April 3 since the ONS began taking records in 2005.

The BBC presenter said the graph leaves “no doubt that COVID-19 is having a dramatic effect on weekly British deaths”.

He urged critics of official data to “read the latest ONS stats for total deaths up to early April, see that it is now well above five-year average and that COVID-19 is the cause”.

One person tweeted about their astonishment that people were having a hard time believing the statistics.

“Fascinated that people are surprised by this,” they said.

“We’re in a global pandemic. They tend to kill a lot of people.”

But others appeared more sceptical.

One man questioned: “Is COVID the ’cause’? Until we know how many died ‘of’ covid as opposed to ‘with’ COVID we can’t know that’s true.”

Meanwhile Piers took to Twitter to push a conspiracy theory claiming tonic water was an effective treatment for the virus which has killed more than 11,000 people in the UK.

He tweeted: “Vital News! Wrong treatment used on COVID-19.

“It’s a blood-iron prob needing oxygen not ventilators (except in rare cases).

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“Anti-malarial chloroquine and quinine (tonic water) is cure.

“Vaccine useless – a Bill Gates control and rob plan.”

He urged his followers to retweet the message especially those in the medical field.

Ms Blaiklock jumped on the bandwagon and quickly spread his post further afield.

In the now deleted tweet, the Brexiteer claimed the soaring death count in the UK is only “average”.

She said: “Everyone should take a look at the UK Government’s own death statistics on its stats website.

“Deaths are exactly the same as the five-year average – and by age you would expect.

“There is no rise in death rates in the UK at all.”

On Tuesday the ONS published figures which suggested the true scale of the coronavirus crisis in the UK may be much worse.

The body published data showing 6,235 people in England and Wales had died from coronavirus in the week up to April 3 when deaths in the community were taken into account.

This is 15 percent higher than the figures previously reported.

The provisional data is based on death certificates where COVID-19 or suspected COVID-19 is mentioned, including in combination with other health conditions.

Nick Stripe of the ONS said the mortality rate during that week was “60 percent higher than the five-year average” since records began in 2005.

The official death toll from COVID-19 in the UK stands at 12,107.

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