Health Secretary Matt Hancock has told Brits to stay at home this weekend, saying we must ignore the good weather as the nation ‘cannot afford’ to relax the social distancing measures currently in place.

In the government’s daily coronavirus briefing, he said: “For now, the only way to protect yourself and your family from this disease is to stay at home.”

Hancock continued: “We’re set for a warm weekend in some parts of the country, but the disease is still spreading and we absolutely cannot afford to relax the social distancing measures we’ve put in place … If we do people will die.

“This advice is not a request, it is an instruction.

“Stay at home, protect lives, and then you will be doing your part.”

Ruth May, Chief Nursing Officer in England, echoed Hancock’s message and asked people to remain vigilant in spite of any good weather.

Offering her ‘sincere condolences’ to the family and friends of Aimee O’Rourke and Areema Nasreen, two of her NHS colleagues who have died from the coronavirus, May said: “I worry there are going to be more.”

She also thanked NHS staff for ‘pulling together to make sure we continue to prepare for the Covid-19 surge’.

With the national death toll now standing at 3,605, Hancock also said the government was doing everything it could to ‘boost NHS capacity’, praising those behind the new NHS Nightingale hospital – which opened in London’s ExCel Centre today as the first of several such facilities to launch across the UK.

Having taken over London’s ExCel exhibition space – often used for large-scale events – the hospital is able to hold up to 4,000 patients.

Prince Charles commemorated the hospital’s launch earlier today with a speech via video link, referring to the project as ‘an intensely practical message of hope at this time of national suffering’.

He said: “It is, without doubt, a spectacular and almost unbelievable feat of work in every sense, from its speed of construction – in just nine days as we’ve heard – to its size and the skills of those who have created it.”

The Royal – who recently recovered from coronavirus – added: “An example, if ever one was needed, of how the impossible could be made possible and how we can achieve the unthinkable through human will and ingenuity.”

Along with forthcoming temporary hospitals in the likes of Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Cardiff and Belfast, today the government announced another two: one in Bristol, which will have a capacity of up to 1,000 beds, and another in Harrogate, with 500 beds.