Coronavirus: Child at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital ‘tests positive’ for Covid-19

A child at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital has tested positive for coronavirus, the BBC has reported.

The case was said to be one of two new positive tests confirmed by Liverpool City Council on Thursday.

The age or sex of the child has not been revealed.

A spokeswoman for the hospital said she couldn’t comment on individual cases when approached by Yahoo News UK on Friday morning.

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In its statement, Liverpool council said of the two cases: “One is a known contact of an existing patient and the other has recently returned from Italy. The patients are now receiving specialist treatment.”

On Thursday, a patient with underlying health conditions became the first person to die in the UK after contracting coronavirus.

The person, reported to be a woman in her 70s, had been admitted to the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading on Wednesday night.

Last week, a British tourist who had been on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was quarantined in Japan, became the first UK citizen to die from the virus.

Meanwhile Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, has said he does not think a working vaccine will be produced in time for the coronavirus outbreak.

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He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday morning: “I don’t think we will get the vaccine for this outbreak.”

Sir Patrick added: “We have been looking at this right from the outset with very sophisticated mathematical modelling, and we are confident of refining the death rate, the mortality rate, down. We really think 1% is probably the most accurate figure at the moment.

“It may be lower.”

More than 160 people have now tested positive for coronavirus in the UK, in the largest day-on-day increase.

In total, 163 people had tested positive for Covid-19 as of 9am on Friday, up from 115 cases reported at the same time on Thursday.