British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is making very good progress in his recovery from COVID-19, his office said on Saturday, as his health secretary said the peak of the outbreak in Britain had not yet been reached. 

"The prime minister continues to make very good progress," a Downing Street spokesman said. 

Johnson is in the early stages of recovery on a hospital ward after spending three nights in intensive care. Downing Street on Friday announced that he had been able to take "short walks, between periods of rest" at St Thomas' Hospital in London.  

The prime minister has been playing games and watching classic films, and his choices of entertainment are said to include the 1987 comedy Withnail and I, and Lord of the Rings. He has also been playing sudoku, according to Sky News.  

Johnson's fiancee Carrie Symonds, who is expecting their first child in weeks, has sent him letters and baby scans. Symonds herself has suffered COVID-19 symptoms.

Johnson was moved to a general ward on Thursday evening after spending three days in intensive care. He was taken to the hospital on Sunday, 10 days after testing positive for the virus. 

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The latest death toll from the coronavirus in the United Kingdom has risen by 917 to 9,875 people, health officials said on Saturday. The country now has a total of 78,991 confirmed COVID-19 cases.

Britain imposed a lockdown three weeks ago in a bid to curb the spread of the virus and ministers have been pleading with Britons to observe the ban on social gatherings over the Easter weekend. 

"People have got to stay at home unless there is a very good reason not to," Health Secretary Matt Hancock said.

That message comes though as the government has come under increasing pressure to detail how long the strict curbs on movement would last, with the shutdown meaning many businesses are unable to operate. 

Ministers have said Britain needed to pass the peak of the outbreak before changes could be made, and Hancock said although the number of hospital admissions had started to flatten out, there was not enough evidence yet to have confidence they were past the worst. 

"Our judgement is we're not there yet. We haven't seen a flattening enough to be able to say that we've reached the peak," he told BBC radio. 

A decision on the lockdown will not be made until next week, the government has said, and some scientists have suggested the peak might still be some time off. Hancock said "nobody knows" when it would be. 

The death rate is also expected to increase over the next few days, health officials have cautioned, but they say they are hopeful that the lockdown will mean that the overall number of deaths will be below 20,000. 

(With input from Reuters, Xinhua)