LARGEST SPIKE IN DEATHS YET
Aunt in ‘stay at home’ plea after young man’s death
THE public are being urged to take heed of the government’s “stay at home” guidance – as the deadly consequences of the coronavirus are being laid out to bear.
In the 24 hours since her previous update, Nicola Sturgeon revealed six more people had died from Covid-19 – bringing the nation’s death toll to 22.
Meanwhile, 51 people are being treated in intensive care, with the First Minister adding: “It is clear that we are now seeing a rapid rise in coronavirus cases in Scotland”.
It comes as the number of tests for Covid-19 broke 10,000 in Scotland, resulting in 719 confirmed cases.
That equated to the biggest dayon-day increase in the country, rising by 135 overnight.
In Greater Glasgow alone, 221 people have the bug, with 87 cases in neighbouring Lanarkshire.
The “stay at home” message has been reiterated by a heartbroken relative of a “fit and healthy” 28-year-old who died after being diagnosed with Covid-19.
Adam Sullivan’s aunt Helen, who lives in Airdrie, Lanarkshire, is urging people to heed government advice after he passed away on Tuesday just over a week after he reported being unable to breathe.
He had suffered a chest infection three weeks earlier.
According to family, Adam, who is from London, was seen by a doctor who realised the seriousness of his condition, called an ambulance and he was put in an induced coma and a ventilator.
His family were told last Wednesday that he had the deadly infection and despite efforts, he passed away on Tuesday afternoon.
Helen said his death had left her devastated, particularly as she is unable to travel to London to be with her family.
She urged the public to “please, please, please, stay at home”.
Paying tribute to Adam she said: “He was very athletic and outgoing and a funny personality. He loved his nieces and nephews.”
A further 28 people in England have died, bringing the UK total of fatalities to 463.
During his daily briefing, the Prime Minister said the Government was “massively ramping up our testing programmes” and hoped to be conducting 250,000 tests a day “very soon”.
However, Professor Chris Whitty, the UK’s chief medical officer, said there had been a “global bottleneck” on buying more testing kits.
He stressed that frontline NHS workers would need the tests first so they could get back to work if they have had already had the virus.
The NHS is also carrying out separate tests to see if people currently have the virus, which are being given to patients in hospitals alongside some community sampling.
Replying to a question about how well the country was coping,
Johnson said that “never in our history has the Government put its arms around people in the way we are doing now to help them get through this time”.
He added that a tailored package of support would be announced today to help self-employed people.
The Prime Minister said: “I do think when you look at the sheer scale of what the Government is doing to get this country through, we will cope and are coping very well indeed under the most challenging possible circumstances.”
Prof Whitty said it will be a “close-run thing” for the NHS to get through the coming weeks without the coronavirus crisis overwhelming critical care capacity.
Everyone needs to follow the strict lockdown measures designed to slow the spread of the virus in order to give the NHS the best possible chance, he said, adding that the NHS was ramping up its capacity.
Although there was “not enormous pressure” at present, the NHS was braced for demand for critical care beds to rise over the next fortnight.
But the Prime Minister also spoke of good news – revealing that after a call for 250,000 volunteers to help support the health service, the government was inundated with offers.
He said he wanted to offer a “special thank you to everyone who has now volunteered to help the NHS.
“When we launched the appeal last night, we hoped to get 250,000 volunteers over a few days.
“But I can tell you that in just 24 hours, 405,000 people have responded to the call.
“That is already, in one day, as many volunteers as the population of Coventry.”