The Speaker of the House of Keys released details of Covid-19 infection statistics on his social media pages on Saturday morning, ahead of the official announcement.

MHKs are supplied with such details but they are usually kept under wraps for an official announcement and updated statistics on the government website at about 4pm.

Juan Watterson, who is MHK for Rushen and who says he’d like to be the next President of Tynwald, said: ’It’s obviously in the interests of the public to be as well informed as possible. All of my Tynwald colleagues are trying to use our contacts and social media presence to ensure that people have timely access to the information as it becomes available, to try to get answers to constituents questions and to feed back to Council of Ministers on areas they may not have considered.

’The information shared at the weekend was not marked confidential so it was assumed it was available for distribution.’

The figures given to MHKs do not appear to be the same as those released at the briefing because they are given out earlier.

On Monday, the figures of new cases announced at the 4pm media briefing were questioned by a reporter.

Health Minister David Ashford said the figure was 56. In an unusual move, another figure was released online four hours later. That was 110.

The number of active case was 369. The 8pm figure was 419.