Don’t panic!
Boris insists it’s all under control ...but Army are ready to step in
POLICE could ignore low-level crime and troops could be deployed on the streets as part of the government’s dramatic three-month ‘battle plan’ if coronavirus takes hold in the UK.
There are also warnings that coronavirus could incapacitate a fifth of the workforce.
Patients not suffering from the disease could also be sent home from hospital – and local authorities will be helped with the ‘challenge’ of dealing with increasing numbers of deaths among the elderly and vulnerable.
The striking scenario emerged as Boris Johnson published the action plan, warning at a press conference that it was now ‘highly likely’ there would be a major outbreak of coronavirus in the UK.
The Prime Minister said the government would take all ‘necessary and reasonable steps’, but appealed for the public to keep ‘going about our business as usual’ – saying Britain had the resources and the resolve to ‘get through’ this ‘national challenge’.
Asked whether he thought the UK still had the ‘bulldog spirit’ to combat the virus, the PM said: “I do think that this is a national challenge.
“The potential is there for this to be something that our country has to get through.
“But I have absolutely no doubt that we have the resources, we have the health service to get through it.”
The response is still in the ‘containment’ phase, with just 39 confirmed cases in the UK so far.
But experts fear a need to shift to damage limitation within days or weeks after rising infections in Europe.
A reasonable ‘worst case scenario’ would see 80 per cent of the UK population contract the virus, with up to a fifth of employees unable to work in ‘peak weeks’.
Such an outbreak may take hold within weeks – and it would be three months before its highest point was reached.
Mr Johnson said the plan was to ‘contain, delay, research, mitigate’.
“For the overwhelming majority of people who contract the virus, this will be a mild disease from which they will speedily and fully recover, as we have already seen,” he said.