UK RECORDS DEADLIEST DAY; PM’S FIANCEE HAS SYMPTOMS

LONDON:Britain is unlikely to lift its stringent lockdown rules until the end of May, once the spread of the coronavirus has started to slow, a leading government adviser said on Saturday as the death toll shot up to 4,313.

The government has put Britain into a widespread shutdown, closing pubs, restaurants and nearly all shops, while ordering people to stay home unless absolutely essential to venture out.

Britain’s death toll from the coronavirus rose by 20% to 4,313 by Friday afternoon with 708 new fatalities recorded, the health ministry said. There was a 23% rise on Thursday.

“We want to move to a situation where at least by the end of May we’re able to substitute some less intensive measures, more based on technology and testing, for the complete lockdown we have now,” Neil Ferguson, a leading professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London, told BBC Radio.

UK health secretary Matt Hancock has said it was “perfectly possible” that the deadliest day of the outbreak in the country will take place on Easter Sunday, with the potential of around a thousand deaths every 24 hours until then, a media report said.

Carrie Symonds, the fiancée of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is expecting a child, said she had spent the past week in bed with symptoms of the coronavirus but after seven days of rest felt stronger and was on the mend.

Johnson said on Friday he was remaining in isolation with mild symptoms of coronavirus, including a raised temperature, seven days after he first tested positive.