Hope over rate of infections
POSSIBLE COUNTRY IS STARTING TO SEE ‘FLATTENING OF THE CURVE’
BRITAIN’S medical experts say it’s possible that the country may be seeing the start of the ‘flattening of the curve’ of infections.
They believe the same may apply to hospital admissions, although it won’t become clear for another seven days.
And with a time-lag between sufferers going to hospital and any deaths, it could be up three weeks before the level of fatalities begin to level off.
A total of 213,181 people have been tested, 55,242 giving a positive result.
Manchester and Leeds were not included in the daily figure for testing, due to a delay in processing the data.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who is standing in for ill Boris Johnson, told the latest Downing Street briefing there had been progress towards the target of 100,000 tests a day by the end of the month. He said that was helped with the opening of nine drive-through testing centres.
Mr Raab said the government’s commitment to reach 100,000 coronavirus tests per day by the end of the month still stood.
With concerns that antibody tests will not be ready, meaning antigen tests would need to be significantly ramped up, he said: “Lots of these things are in very high demand but we are doing everything we can on every front to get all of the testing capabilities we need. But yes, the 100,000 per day target still stands.”
Asked whether it is time to level with people about how long lockdown will last, Mr Raab said: “We have levelled with everyone from the outset and been as transparent as possible. But the critical thing is to take evidence-based decisions.”
Chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty said: “It is really important we get to the point that we are all confident we are beyond the peak. Then we can make clear the combination of things we need to do to reduce measures and what period of time is sensible.”
Mr Raab added: “The critical thing is to take evidence-based decisions and so we’ve said that we will take any review once we’ve got the evidence that the measures are working. And having the kind of impact taking past the peak which means that they can be responsibly done. We’re not at that stage yet.
“Our number one and overriding focus right now is on conveying the key message which is that everyone needs to keep adhering to this guidance.
“There is a long Easter bank holiday weekend coming up, warm weather, and we understand people are making big sacrifices to follow this guidance. It is helping, it is contributing to our ability to tackle the coronavirus. The worst thing now would be to take our foot off the pedal, to ease up on that and risk losing the gains that have been made.”