The health secretary, Matt Hancock has said almost 10,000 people a day are contracting coronavirus and is calling on people to download the newly-released NHS tracing app to “make the country a safer place”.

Although this is still fewer than the “100,000 per day” estimated during the spring peak

In an interview with Sky News, he said: "The massive testing capability we’ve got helps to find where the virus is so, if you think about it, yesterday we had a figure that there is over 6,000 people who have tested positive in the previous 24 hours.

"And that is comparable to the highest levels in the peak in terms of the number of people who were tested positive but back then we estimate through surveys that over 100,000 people a day were catching the disease, but we only found around 6,000 of them and they tested positive.

"Now we estimate that it is under 10,000 people a day getting the disease – that’s too high but it is still much lower than in the peak – and through the mass testing we have and the quarter-of-a-million capacity, we found yesterday over 6,000 of them.

"That then allows us to do the contact tracing for everyone who has tested positive and find who they’ve been in contact with.

"In addition, today with the app, if you download the app you will also have that added protection for you and your loved ones."