Covid death toll rises by 351 but hospital cases down 14%
THE CORONAVIRUS death toll in the UK rose by 351 yesterday to a total of 36,393, the Home Secretary said last night.
Priti Patel told the daily Downing Street media briefing the latest official data showed 9,307 people are currently in hospital with the disease, a 14 per cent decline from 10,781 a week ago.
The Cabinet minister said: “All our thoughts, prayers and deepest sympathies remain with all those who have lost their loved ones.”
Chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, also appearing at the briefing, said the epidemic in the UK is currently either “flat or declining”.
He also confirmed that the crucial R figure – indicating how many other people each infected person passes the bug on to – was still between 0.7 and 1 across the country.
Sir Patrick explained: “We’re currently at an R across the UK between 0.7 and one. “Below one in every area of the UK, we think, but potentially quite close to one. “So, the epidemic is either flat or declining at the moment in the UK, and in most areas it is declining.” Pointing at a chart showing the progress of the outbreak, Sir Patrick said the public should continue to observe social-distancing measures.
He said: “This peak is an artificial peak, it’s a peak that we managed to suppress by the things that you have all done, we have all done, to adhere to social distancing.
“The risk is that if we move too fast and do things in the wrong way, we get a second peak that would look exactly the same, and that’s what we’ve got to avoid.”
He added: “As some of the rules around this are relaxed, it’s important that we do maintain the social distancing and we do maintain the rules around distance between people and our interactions.”