Coronation Street actor Colson Smith has said that the show will reference the coronavirus pandemic once new episodes start being filmed.

Filming on the long-running soap was brought to an abrupt halt last month as the UK entered lockdown due to the spread of COVID-19, which has now claimed almost 150,000 lives worldwide.

Episodes currently being broadcast were filmed before the shutdown and so have not made reference to the disease, but that will change when the soap returns later in the year.

"It will be interesting," Smith, who plays rookie policeman Craig Tinker, told Good Morning Britain. "I think we're all looking forward to, when we get the nod to say we're going back, reading them scripts and reading how we show the guidelines, the social distancing and how we show what we've missed.

"We've got a great team of writers behind us and I'm sure they're all working away at the moment so that when we come back we've got everything right and we're ready."

The soap is on course to drop off the air in early July when all existing episodes have been broadcast.