Get the latest on coronavirus. Sign up to the Daily Brief for news, explainers, how-tos, opinion and more.

A graph comparing the UK’s damning coronavirus death toll to the total in other countries has been mounted on a giant billboard – after the government tried to quietly drop it from government press briefings.

The stunt was the brainchild of Led By Donkeys, a group of activists famed for putting politicians’ tweets on display using huge public signs. 

Before they were ditched earlier this month, the grim slides underlined that the UK had the largest number of deaths in Europe. Government advisers usually discussed the graphic at the daily televised press conference.  

Led By Donkeys said on Twitter on Friday: “The government has stopped releasing its global death comparison slide (wonder why?) so we’ve published it for them – on an 18sq/m billboard on Westminster Bridge Road. Unlike Boris Johnson, we’ll be updating it over the coming weeks.”

The graphs were dropped, a government spokesperson told HuffPost UK, because Number 10 wanted to vary the “content and format” of data and that it was “difficult to compare statistics across countries”.

At the time, 32,692 people in the UK had lost their lives to the disease, after deaths in hospitals, care homes and the community were included.

For Italy, Spain, France and Germany, the national figure stood at 30,911, 26,920, 26,643 and 7,667 respectively. America, meanwhile, had recorded a total of 81,779 deaths. 

The number of people who have now died in the UK after testing positive for Covid-19 now stands at 36,393.

Earlier this month, Led By Donkeys compared Boris Johnson’s response to the coronavirus to Neville Chamberlain’s “peace for our time” moment in a giant projection beamed on to the White Cliffs of Dover.

The Kent landmark was illuminated with a mock-up of the prime minister holding a scrap of paper saying: “Highest death toll in Europe.”