STAYING at home in lockdown this weekend is an instruction – not a request – the Government has said.

It is feared that warm weather forecast over the weekend could draw people outside from their houses and away from strict social distancing. But speaking during a daily Covid-19 briefing earlier this evening, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that ’people will die if we relax our discipline now’ and that we must all ’stay at home to save lives’.

Today the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK have reached 38, 605 and there have been 684 deaths in the last 24 hours.

In last night’s live broadcast to the country, chief nursing officer for England Ruth May paid tribute to two nurses, both in their thirties, who have died after contracting coronavirus.

Areema Nasreen and Aimee O’Rourke ’were one of us, one of my profession, one of the NHS family, said Ms May.

’I worry that there’s going to be more and I want to honour them today and recognise their service.’

On Sunday at 8pm, the Queen is set to address the nation in a recorded broadcast. She has only made such an address on a handful of other occasions during here reign; these have included during the Gulf War of 1991, ahead of the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1987, and following the Queen Mother’s death in 2002.