ATHERSTONE and North Warwickshire has been warned normal life will "not resume for at least six months" as the death toll in the UK from coronavirus rose by more than 200 in the last 24 hours.

The Government placed the four corners of the UK on an unprecedented peacetime "emergency footing" as deputy chief medical officer for England Dr Jenny Harries said the nation will not be in "complete lockdown" until September, although social distancing measures will be lifted only gradually.

Her warning at Sunday's coronavirus press conference came as the NHS announced the first frontline hospital worker to die of Covid-19 – consultant Amged El-Hawrani from Burton's Queen's Hospital.

Cabinet minister Robert Jenrick said "we simply cannot" ask health workers to go on to the frontline without adequate protective equipment.

Dr Harries said the three-week reviews on the measures to slow the disease's spread will likely continue for six months and that their success would be judged on slowing its rate.

"But we must not then suddenly revert to our normal way of living, that would be quite dangerous," she said."

A sudden lifting could see the nation's sacrifices "wasted" with another spike in deaths announced today, which have now reached 1,228.

"We need to keep that lid on and then gradually we will be able to hopefully adjust some of the social distancing measures and gradually get us all back to normal," she said.

"Three weeks for review, two or three months to see if we've really squashed it, but three to six months, ideally, but lots of uncertainty in that but then to see at which point we can actually get back to normal and it is plausible it could go further than that.

"This is not to say we would be in complete lockdown for six months, but as a nation we have to be really, really responsible and keep doing what we're all doing until we're sure we can gradually start lifting various interventions which are likely to be spaced.

Communities Secretary Mr Jenrick announced that the emergency footing was now raised in all parts of the country, adding: "This is an unprecedented step in peace time, we haven't done anything like this since the Second World War."

Confirmed cases on Day 59 of the virus going live in the UK are nearing 20,000 now – up in 24 hours from 17,081 to 19,522.

Warwickshire has 127 confirmed cases with Birmingham topping the upper tie local authority table on 513.

Some 133 days since the first coronavirus case, the world figure broke through the 700,000 barrier this evening – less than 36 hours from hitting the 600,000 mark.

The global total is 707,682 with the death toll up 6,000 in the same period at 33,524.

The mortality rate of UK patients admitted to intensive care with a confirmed case of coronavirus is close to 50 per cent, according to an early study of critical care outcomes.

The report, by the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre shows that out of 165 admissions to critical care units, 79 patients have died and 86 were discharged.

A further 609 patients were last reported as still being in intensive care.

The study includes data on all confirmed cases of Covid-19 reported to the centre up to midnight on Thursday from 285 critical care units in England, Wales and Northern Ireland taking part in an ICNARC programme.

The study shows that more than 70 per cent of those admitted to critical care with Covid-19 were men, with the average age just over 60.

Of the 79 who have died, 21 were women and 58 were men.

An age breakdown of this group shows that nine were aged between 16-49, 29 were aged 50-69 and 41 were 70 or older.

Meanwhile, mass testing is the fastest way to end the coronavirus lockdown, according to former health secretary Jeremy Hunt.

The success countries such as South Korea and Germany have had in using mass testing to curb the spread of the virus should serve as an example, he said.

"The restaurants are open in South Korea," he wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

"You can go shopping in Taiwan. Offices are open in Singapore.

"These countries learned the hard way how to deal with a pandemic after the deadly Sars virus. They now show us how we can emerge from lockdown."

Just weeks after it was the second hardest-hit country in Asia, widespread testing has seen South Korea dramatically slow its infection rate, recording just 105 new cases on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Germany has carried out four times as many tests as the UK and recorded only 482 deaths in 60,659 confirmed cases of the virus.