An urgent review has been ordered into how daily coronavirus death figures are calculated after it was claimed the current method did not account for people recovering from COVID-19.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has asked for the examination of Public Health England’s data, which states there have so far been 45,119 COVID-19 associated deaths.

A government source confirmed that PHE’s current method of calculation means if a person was previously diagnosed with COVID-19 but subsequently died of unrelated causes, their death would still be counted as part of the PHE coronavirus death tally.

The review ordered by Mr Hancock aims to sort out the issue and establish the impact on the overall death tally.