Neither of them pulled any punches. Sitting together in Downing Street, the government’s two most senior scientific and medical advisers on Covid-19 pointed to graphs to paint a stark picture of a virus on the march.

Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance and the Chief Medical Officer for England, Professor Chris Whitty, said “the epidemic is doubling roughly every seven days”, leading to the Covid alert level moving up to level 4.

And as the number of cases rises so, of course, will the number of deaths.

The latest daily UK figures show that there have been 4,368 new Covid cases, and the latest 24-hour death figure is 11, bringing the total official number of deaths from the virus to 41,788.

50,000 Covid cases a day warning for UK as alert level raised