Glimmer of hope - but experts urge caution

A SECOND successive day of falling coronavirus deaths has given Britons a glimmer of hope.

The latest daily figures of 439 showed a 30 per cent drop on the previous day.

The national death toll now stands at 5,373. The number of new cases has also fallen.

But health experts were quick to point out that the reductions could not yet be classed as a trend and that the lockdown and social distancing measures must continue.

Professor Dame Angela McLean, deputy chief scientific adviser, told the latest Downing Street briefing the efforts by Britons to stay at home were working and said the growth in the number of Covid-19 cases in hospitals was ‘not as bad as it would have been if we had not made these efforts.’ She said: “It is working but the big question is, is the virus spread slowing down enough to make hospital admissions stabilise and then even fall?”

Dame Angela said the hospital admissions data by region had risen ‘very steadily’ until April 1 and then showed a ‘more complicated behaviour, starting we hope to slow down”.

She added: “But it really is too soon to see the effects of the big changes we’ve all made to our lives from March 23 onwards because that’s only two weeks ago and it takes several weeks after you’ve become infected for you to realise you’re ill enough that you really need to be in hospital.

“We’re all watching these numbers very, very carefully and we’re very much hoping what’s going to happen next is they will at least stop rising.”

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the government’s top priority was to ‘stop the spread and make sure we can get past the peak.’

He was asked about what the government’s exit strategy was from the current lockdown policy.

He said: “That’s the over-riding focus of the government right now.”

Dame Angela said: “We need a good, long time series of data on all of these stages of infection in order to be able to tell what the impact of the measures that came on March 23 are going to be.

“It’s too early to tell yet, we need people to carry on following those instructions so that we can work out three weeks later what actually happens in hospitals.”

She added: “We need to know how well the current restrictions are working before we can say anything sensible about what the next stage might be.”

Responding to a question about whether government measures could be eased in a staggered fashion by either region or by type of person, Mr Raab said: “Obviously we’re very mindful of the challenges businesses are facing, small businesses, all employers and of course the workforce as well.

“But the risk is if we start taking our eye off the ball, of tackling the coronavirus, stopping the spread and getting through the peak, we risk delaying the point at which we could in the future take those decisions on easing restrictions.

“So it is really important right now to keep the over-riding focus on maintaining the discipline that we’ve had, keeping adherence to the guidelines that the Government has set out and making sure that we stop the spread of coronavirus.”

Chief Medical officer Professor Chris Whitty said antibody testing to see if people have had the virus and recovered - would be more effective later in the epidemic.

He said: “At this point in time we would expect quite a small proportion of the population has probably got antibodies. There’s two reasons for that. There’s the proportion actually infected and then there’s a period of time between somebody getting an infection and antibodies being routinely detectable.