Most of the working aged adults who died during the peak of the pandemic caught the coronavirus before the lockdown, according to a new study.
Seven in 10 deaths of people aged 20 to 64 who died of Covid-19 between March 9 and June 30 likely caught the deadly bug prior to the government shutting the country down on March 23.
The figure has been published by the Office for National Statistics, which was analysing the 5,330 deaths of working aged people in that period in England and Wales.
From death dates given they counted back 20 days - the average time it takes for someone to suffer their first symptom to when they die - and then the 14 days that typically separates infection to symptom onset.