Boris Johnson ‘sitting up in bed and engaging with medics’

Rishi Sunak said the prime minister has been “engaging positively” with the medics treating him in St Thomas’s Hospital in London on Wednesday.

Downing Street later confirmed Mr Johnson remains in intensive care but is making “steady progress”.

But the boost came as the nation saw its record number of deaths in hospitals, with a rise of 938 taking the toll to at least 7,097, according to Department of Health figures.

Though significantly larger than the previous highest toll of 786, Deputy chief scientific adviser Professor Dame Angela McLean said new cases are not “accelerating out of control”.

Mr Sunak said Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who is deputising for the PM, will chair a Cobra emergency committee on Thursday to discuss the lockdown measures with leaders of the devolved nations.

Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford said the lockdown will not end in Wales next week, ahead of the UK-wide review into the restrictions.

At the daily Downing Street press conference, Mr Sunak unveiled a £750 million bailout to keep struggling charities afloat in the Treasury’s latest emergency measure.

Updating the nation on the PM’s condition, he said: “The latest from the hospital is the prime minister remains in intensive care where his condition is improving.

“I can also tell you that he has been sitting up in bed and engaging positively with the clinical team.”

Health Secretary Matt Hancock welcomed the development on Twitter, adding: “He will fight through!”

The PM’s three-week review into the lockdown measures had been due on Monday, but Downing Street is now saying it will be “on or around” that mark.

Mr Sunak declined to “speculate about the future”, saying the evidence to inform any review “will only be available next week”.

But after Mr Drakeford said “we will not throw away the gains” by “abandoning our efforts just as they begin to bear fruit”, the key figures leading the response were pressed on whether different approaches could be taken in different nations.

“I suspect that simple strategies might well turn out to be the best to use, but we’ll see,” Prof McLean responded.

Though the death toll rose, Prof McLean said there was “good news” in the daily number of new cases, which is a better indicator of whether distancing measures are working than fatalities.