Another 204 people have died in the UK after testing positive for coronavirus as of 5pm on Friday, taking the official death toll to 40,465. This number does not include all deaths involving Covid-19 across the UK, which is thought to have passed 50,000. So far, a total of 284,868 people in the UK have tested positive for coronavirus. The Department of Health and Social Care said that as of 9am on Saturday, there had been 5,438,712 tests, including 218,187 tests on 5 June, of which 1,557 were positive. Among the dead were 75 people in England who died in hospital after testing positive for coronavirus, bringing the total number in England to 27,359. The patients were aged between 43 and 100 and all had underlying health conditions, NHS England announced on Saturday. Six of the deaths occurred in Scotland, where the number of deaths among people who have tested positive for coronavirus rose to 2,415. Scottish government figures show 15,603 people have now tested positive for Covid-19 across the country, an increase of 21. As of Friday evening, 1,019 patients were in hospital with confirmed or suspected coronavirus, with 20 in intensive care. Friday also had the highest number of NHS workers in Scotland being absent in June, with 5,317 staff off for reasons related to Covid-19. And 406 Scottish adult care homes, 38% of the total, were reported to have a current case of suspected Covid-19 – where a resident has shown symptoms within the past fortnight. One more person with coronavirus has died in Northern Ireland, taking the total number recorded by the Department of Health, primarily accounting for hospital deaths, to 537. Another 14 cases of the virus were confirmed in Northern Ireland, bringing the total since the outbreak began to 4,790. The figures came as Scotland’s former chief scientific adviser, Anne Glover, called for an inquiry to identify failures in the UK government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Glover said the inquiry must be delivered within months to prepare for a second wave of the disease. She said it would be “inexcusable” for ministers to repeat “mistakes that have already been made” should there be a second spike of coronavirus cases this winter. On Friday, 27 medical and scientific experts signed a letter published in the Guardian warning that many more Britons may die if the government does not come up with solutions to “some of the structural problems that have made implementing an effective response so difficult”. Glover, who is now president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, told the PA news agency: “Given that second wave is likely to come at a time that is likely to coincide with seasonal influenza, and that would give us serious problems, we really need to understand what the failings have been in our apparent inability to be able to deal with this pandemic appropriately.”