Dominic Raab, the UK Foreign Secretary and first Secretary of State, has acknowledged that the government of Boris Johnson has been understating the number of deaths from Covid-19 in the UK.

The issue was highlighted earlier today in an article by Hot Press editor Niall Stokes.

Dominic Raab now says that there have been 26,097 deaths in total in the UK. That is an increase of 3,811 deaths on the mortality figure given yesterday. Of the additional deaths, Dominic Raab has said that 765 are ‘new' deaths.

Following increasing pressure from those who believe that the true scale of the carnage in the UK was being deliberately under-reported, the UK government has now committed that it will report coronavirus deaths "in all settings, not just in hospitals.”

The mortality figures, which are supplied by Public Health England, will however only cover people who have tested positive for coronavirus. As such, it is perfectly clear that they will still represent a significant understatement of the true figures.

It is highly likely that many Covid-19 related deaths have taken place, especially in nursing homes and care centres, without any test taking place. These deaths will still not be recorded in the daily toll.

As reported by The Guardian, Public Health England said in a statement the total number of (acknowledged) deaths was about 17% higher than previous data had showed. PHE confirmed that it had reported an additional 3,811 deaths since the start of the outbreak.

According to PHE, 30% of the ‘additional' deaths in fact took place in hospitals and were identified through the PHE laboratory system. The other 70% of additional deaths took place outside a hospital setting.

All of this still leaves huge question marks over the accuracy of the figures presented by Dominic Raab. Is it remotely credible to imagine that deaths in nursing homes, care centres, prisons and in the wider community represent only 10% of the total number of deaths as a result of coronavirus? Looking at the comparable figures from Ireland, Italy, Spain and France, the answer has to be an emphatic 'no'.

And how otherwise can the British authorities account for a much bigger surge in deaths over the past eight weeks than is represented by the official Covid-19 figures?

The long and the short of it is that, while we are a little bit closer to the truth, we still have a long, long way to go. Additional figures for Northern Ireland remain unclear.