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With 359 daily deaths reported on Wednesday in the UK, Britain’s daily coronavirus death toll has exceeded the daily number of deaths reported on the same day in the all EU27 countries put together. Revealing the shocking data on BBC Newsnight, political editor Nicholas Watt told host Emily Maitlis the statistics were “astonishing” but warned against comparisons between countries which collect coronavirus deaths data in different ways. He said: “Let’s have a look at a graphic which has an absolutely astonishing statistics.

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“What this shows is that the UK now has more daily deaths from COVID than the rest of the entire EU put together.

“So there’s that 359 UK figure against 314 for the 27 member states of the EU.

“Perhaps we can look at it this way: the UK, with a population of 66 million has more deaths than the EU with a population of nearly 450 million.

“But it is important, Emily, to add a few words of caution.

“There’s a two-week lag between the UK and France and Italy that had the highest death rates in the EU.

“You have to be very careful about comparing deaths between countries which obviously compile them in a different way.

“And that UK 359 figure overnight, that’s for the deaths registered in that period, not deaths that actually took place in that period.”

The UK’s coronavirus death toll has almost passed 40,000 and the country has been warned to be braced for “many job losses” as the human and economic cost of the outbreak becomes clearer.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted he was “very proud” of the Government’s record despite the grim milestone on COVID-related deaths and his admission that large-scale redundancies were “inevitable”.

He said the Government would take an “interventionist” approach to support the economy as it emerges from the lockdown.

At the daily Downing Street press conference on Wednesday, Mr Johnson acknowledged the scale of the challenge he faces.

“I am afraid tragically there will be many, many job losses. That is just inevitable,” he said.

Large sectors of the economy are being kept on life support by taxpayer funding, with businesses borrowing more than £30 billion from three Government-backed coronavirus loan schemes and 8.7 million jobs furloughed.

Mr Johnson vowed: “We will be just as interventionist in the next phase, investing in the UK economy, investing in infrastructure, taking our country forward so that we bounce back as sharply and decisively as we can.”

Former chancellors Lord Darling and George Osborne told MPs that the country could face 1980s levels of unemployment as a result of the pandemic.

Mr Johnson’s appearance at the daily press briefing came after a fractious Prime Minister’s Questions session where he was accused of presiding over a Government that had lost the “trust and confidence” of the British people.

He clashed with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer about his approach to easing the lockdown and reopening England’s schools.

The Prime Minister defended NHS England’s test and trace system – one of the key measures introduced to help the return to something approaching normality – but promised to increase the speed with which people get the results of coronavirus tests.

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The Prime Minister defended his handling of the crisis, telling MPs: “I take full responsibility for everything this Government has been doing in tackling coronavirus and I’m very proud of our record.”

Sir Keir said there had been a “loss of trust” in Mr Johnson’s administration and claimed the Prime Minister had refused an offer to work together on building a consensus on the reopening of England’s schools.

The Prime Minister said Sir Keir had not offered “any dissent” during a private phone call about the Government’s approach and questioned the purpose of his “endless attacks” on the official response to the crisis.

In response to claims that the test and trace system was weeks away from being fully operational, Mr Johnson said it was working – but stopped short of giving figures to back up his claim.

He said “thousands” of contacts of people who had tested positive for coronavirus had been traced.

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