UK coronavirus hospital admissions 'past peak' - Coronavirus Daily Update UK

Michael Gove, good afternoon and welcome to this 10th press conference on our progress in the fight against coffering 19. I'm joined today by Professor Steve Paris, the NHS England's national medical director, in a moment or two I'll pass the word to steve to take us through the cabinet office briefing room slide

update

s but first i want to lay out the latest data on

coronavirus

1 million two hundred six thousand four hundred five

coronavirus

tests have now been carried out in the UK United Kingdom including seventy-six thousand four hundred ninety-six yesterday in total one hundred eighty-six thousand five hundred ninety-nine people tested positive that's an increase of four thousand three hundred thirty-nine cases from yesterday fourteen thousand two hundred forty-eight people are being treated in

hospital

for coronavirus compared to 14,695 yesterday, unfortunately of those who Twenty-eight thousand four hundred and forty-six have tested positive for coronavirus in all settings behind the numbers there has been an increase of three hundred and fifteen deaths since yesterday in all settings this pandemic has claimed more than twenty-eight thousand lives and every one of them is precious each one valued each one irreplaceable The pain of grief and heartbreak is deeply personal, but as a society we are showing care and compassion across borders by offering support and the opportunity to talk together about grief and for those experiencing the first Ramadan without a loved one, this will be particularly painful.

At the same time I send my sincerest condolences to all the grieving families as well as to the Christians who were unable to celebrate Easter together in church and to the Jewish community whose Easter rituals were affected by social distancing our thoughts are with the Muslim neighbors who cannot break their fast together I must adapt their religious and cultural practices because of the crisis we have all learned to adapt and must continue to do so after the Prime Minister sets out how we will return to work later this week his comprehensive plan will explain how we can make our economy to move how we can get our kids back to school how we can travel to work more safely and how we can make life in the workplace safer, but before we can ease existing restrictions, we must make sure the five government tests are met that the number of cases is falling that death rates are declining that the NHS has what it needs and that measures are in place to stop a second spike overwhelming the NHS they are particularly aware that those on the front lines of our public services will need clear guidance on the job they will surely need the proper personal protective equipment and appropriate access to testing if we have To make all the progress we want in the coming weeks, we are consulting with employers and professional unions and public health experts to establish how we can ensure we have the p more safe. possible work environments and the Prime Minister will say later this week on personal protective equipment for key workers: we are ramping up distribution and supply from February 25 to May, the second we have delivered over 1.08 billion items of PPE across the health and social care system in England and tens of millions more have been distributed by our colleagues in devolved administration.

This total figure includes one hundred and forty-nine million masks, 173 million aprons, two million Gans, and six hundred and fourteen million gloves on May 2. we only delivered an additional 20 million items of PPE within England but there is much more to be done and the work led by Lord Dayton to improve domestic production of PPE is vital to our efforts and in testing thanks to the hard work of so many across the world. NHS public health England our pharmaceutical sector and our universities have tested over 200,000 key workers and their families allowing those who do not have the virus to return to work and protecting those who do, now of course we have expanded the criteria for testing beyond key workers to anyone over the age of 65 showing symptoms and anyone who has to travel to get to work and this week we will be testing new track and trace testing procedures on the Isle of Wight with a view to to implement them more widely later this month.

All of these steps will help us get more people back to work and help support the delivery of our public services and I want to thank those who have done so much to keep critical public services delivered during this crisis to our teachers for the incredibly difficult to do. In supporting education to millions and the government has committed £100m to boost remote education learning for those who need it most, our recently launched National Oak Academy is complementing all the work done by schools and teachers by providing 180 video lessons every week and what is particularly interested in helping vulnerable able and disadvantaged children continue their education during the pandemic, schools continue to receive additional funding in the form of the student bonus for those students who deserve it most for worth about $2.4 billion a year and we have s asked for laptops to help disadvantaged young people who will be taking key exams next year.

We will also provide laptops and tablets for those children with social workers and carers to help them stay in touch with the services they need, keeping them safe and supporting learning at home and, if disadvantaged, sectarian school pupils and carers. who are preparing for exams do not have internet access, we will provide free routers for them to connect to while schools are closed for the Easter holidays. We were able to ensure that over 60% of schools were open every day with places for vulnerable children and those for critical workers and the free school meal voucher scheme ensured that children in need could continue to have access to food d a Despite school closures so far, 15,500 schools have placed voucher orders of which more than £35m have been redeemed The latest available data shows that around 49,000 of the children and attendees on April 24 were sorted by schools as vulnerable more than double the number from a week earlier and while this is going in the right direction, we estimate that it still only accounts for around one in ten of all children and young people classified as vulnerable, we want this number to rise even more and we are working with local authority schools. and universities to better support vulnerable youth.

All of this additional support, of course, takes time, puts a strain on existing staff, and costs money. social care this son carries the funds given to councils to over 3.2 billion parents to help communities through this crisis we have also deployed military support to help the public sector the coffer support force mobilized by the mo D is now 20,000 strong today over 3,600 people are deployed in support of 86 separate projects in which military aid is being given to civil authorities at the national level, they are assisting the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Department of Health and Hope Social Care and also the NHS with planning and logistics in England, Scotland and Wales, on the ground, are helping to build and staff temporary workers Nightingale Hospitals and to operate both regional testing centers for coronavirus of which there are now 49 throughout the country and also the mobile test units that we are implementing to date there are 77 throughout the country.

The country's 156 military planners are integrated at grassroots level with our existing local resilience forums emergency services associations local authorities the NHS the Environment Agency and others they are helping to co-coordinate and protect our vital local services and supplies with additional support from senior Whitehall officials, in addition, we must thank local government for their energetic work because since the end of March 90% of street sleepers known to councils have received an offer of accommodation reassuring them of their safety and the government in general is also working hard to support those who have not been identified as protected but who are still vulnerable in the coming days we will be delivering our one millionth package of essential food to the highest risk across the country. up to two hundred thousand phone calls per day and the advice is n helping to support them in other ways, including organizing regular volunteer calls to those who are isolated in our communities the support provided by many local organizations has been inspiring as people step up to help friends and neighbors and the government has helped mobilize another important lifeline through the NHS volunteer response program over 600,000 people have had their ID checked and are helping with

daily

errands making such a significant difference by collecting purchases by making contact as a human voice at the end of a phone and transporting patients and supplies for the NHS and of course we are all working with supermarkets to ensure there are more online delivery slots available to those most in need in each of these areas.

The Westminster government has been working with Scottish government ministers. Northern Ireland government and Executive, this has helped us to monitor and react to the trajectory of the virus across nations, allowing us to intervene wherever people need it at each of these

daily

press conferences, we have paid tribute to the compassion and dedication of our key public sector workers I recognize how much we owe to their stoicism and steadfastness nurses doctors Porter's cleaners paramedics pharmacists home care staff corrections officers and police teachers social workers those who prepare and deliver food collecting our trash and managing our welfare system they deserve our gratitude they deserve our support they are in awe of our minds they are the best of us we owe them a lot and we in government will do everything we can to support them through the next phases of our response to the pandemic and now i will turn it over to the professor paris for what May you take us through the latest developments on the pandemic thank you and good afternoon so if you can start by reminding everyone once again of the five tests that the government has put in place to adjust the lockdown so they are shown here on the first slide .

The first is that the NHS has the capacity to deliver critical care and specialist treatment across the UK and of course I am delighted that the NHS to date has been able to deal superbly with the surge in coronavirus patients we have seen, but that must continue and we must be sure that the same is true in the coming months, secondly, we see a sustained and constant drop in the daily debts of the coronavirus and as I will show you later, that is happening now, although we need to make sure it stays third that there is reliable data showing the infection rate is dropping to manageable levels across the board and while we are confident we have seen a decrease in community spread of the virus we need to see the data and be sure of the data to know that that is indeed the case and that it can be sustained fourthly, that the operational challenge is one of the s which you just heard including testing and PPE are available now are in a position where we will be able to meet future demand in the coming months and fifthly confident that any adjustments to the current measures of social distancing does not risk a second

peak

of infection, a transmission rate exceeding r1 i.

In other words, an average person infects more than one person because that will lead to an increase over time in the number of people infected and then it will increase the pressure on the NHS once again, so that's the five tests now, as we've That said, many, many times the British public has responded magnificently to the government's request to comply with social distancing measures and on the next slide we give you some more data on the evidence that that compliance has been high and you can see here that in retail and workplace recreation and transit stations representing public transportation, but also in other areas, we've seen a decrease in the time people spend in those settings and I think this, overall, by As with other slides that we showed you from last week, it shows that the publiccontinue to respond to requests on social media to deserve to maintain social distancing measures to protect the NHS and save lives now on the next slide we show you the number of positive tests from the UK daily testing history and you will have heard a little bit about that again today and you'll see that the ability to send text messages has increased very rapidly over the last week or so and we're now at a very high level. testing level over a hundred thousand a little drop over the weekend but we anticipate that testing capacity will continue to increase and it's a very important component of our approach on the next slide you'll see how that translates to new cases so that tests positive cases and again saw an increase in the last few days and I think that reflects that we are now testing in more settings where we can allow more people to come forward for testing because testing capacity increased but the numbers have not increased dramatically and I think that means that even with more testing it's evidence that the infection rate in the community is going down on the next slide, you'll see how that translates to people in the

hospital

w at 7 p.m. and as I've said many times , this is a mild disease for the vast majority of people, but unfortunately for some a hospital admission is required and it can be seen that the pic o of hospital

admissions

has happened now, particularly in London where we saw the steepest rise and now we're starting to see the steepest drop and since mid-April we've started to see a decline in the total number of people in hospital and that again is evidence that the rate of transmission of the virus in the community is going down and that translates to fewer people being admitted to hospital and then the next slide showing again how this translates to intensive care bed usage so this is our sickest patience again a small minority but nonetheless a very important group of people who will have to receive care in intensive care units and it can be seen once again as a proportion that has been declining since mid-April and indeed if we were to look at the absolute numbers you would see a decrease in the absolute numbers so again there is evidence that we are seeing do the benefits of adhering to social distancing measures and the reduction in community transmission of the virus is starting to have an effect with fewer people in intensive care and eventually the last two slides sadly represent those who have died, Of course, there are stories behind every death and our hearts go out to those loved ones who have suffered the loss of a relative or friend, but you can see that on a seven-day moving average in these figures provided by the public health of England, positive health and developed administration. that the trend is now down, so it looks like we're past the

peak

of death, and we're starting to see a decline in the number of deaths, which of course is good news and again represents the benefits of complying with social distancing and then on the final slide as we showed earlier an international comparison is now reporting UK debt in all settings remember earlier in these charts showing that for some time we reported deaths in hospitals now it's all settings and again the usual caveats with this that different countries measure this differently the measure that I think we all recognize is going to be the key measure is excess deaths for all mortality because that will take that into account It's not the overall effect of the pandemic , but it will be some time before that kind of cross-country comparison can be made.

Thank you, thank you very much, Steve. public that has been sent, what lessons have you learned to prepare our health care systems for expected future waves of the virus, and how do you ensure that we have adequate supplies of working ventilators and PPE for those expected future waves, now, that question was from Chris and London what lessons have we learned for future waves of the virus how will we ensure we have enough personal protective equipment and ventilators in the future we are learning lessons all the time as in fact the world is a new virus and scientists are working internationally to determine how best to treat it, that's why we're testing treatments that can prevent the virus, once people have been infected, from becoming more dangerous to them, that's also why we are working internationally to seek to secure an enemy of the vaccine, of course we hope it may take some time mpo, but one of the things we've learned is how to improve our testing capacity, we've now scaled up nationally as well. the production and placement of ventilation is also increasing domestic production of PPE and I think the lessons we are learning in the UK are similar to the lessons other countries are also learning Steve yes as you have heard the chief medical officer say on this podium going forward the intent will be to keep the r-value transmission rate below one which is one of the five tests set by the government to adjust the lockdown as i mentioned a few minutes ago and if we can do that successfully then we should protect ourselves against future waves of the virus, but having said that nothing is certain and it is absolutely true that we must go ahead with putting the measures in place within the NHS to ensure that if for any reason we do see our future waves we can deal with this and I think the lesson What I've learned is that the NHS can be incredibly flexible, incredibly agile, and increase its capacity by very little time if you go We're back just a month or two when we were at the beginning - the NHS was planning how we could handle an increase in the number of cases of people with kovat 19 at the time, remember we were looking at health systems in other parts of the The world is getting overwhelmed, so you will remember the images from Wuhan in China at the beginning of this January, you will remember the images we saw from northern Italy when the health system was overwhelmed and patients had to be flown to other countries.

I remember seeing images in closer countries, France, of patients having to be transferred out of major urban centers like Paris, and what I learned is that the NHS and the great NHS staff when presented with that challenge can very well . ry quickly put in the extra capacity that is required and they have done it superbly and at no time during the surge in cases in April was the NHS in a position where it was unable to deliver the treatment to kovat 19:00 patients who needed it. it's a great testament to how well the NHS has been able to cope and I think the lesson to follow is that we can do that but we need to keep that capacity in place but we need to keep it in place at the same time as keeping all the others services that the NHS is providing that we have always provided emergency services but some of the services we had to withdraw during April so elective surgery for example my lesson is the NHS is incredibly flexible they can respond to this challenge and will answer the challenge in the next few months thanks Steve thanks we will move on to the next question submitted by the public Rebecca from Scotland asks us to see the graphs daily fics showing the quantifiable scientific effects of the lockdown how do you account for the unquantifiable non-scientific social and emotional effects when considering the balance between the benefits and harms of the lockdown?

Well, Rebecca, we look all the time to make sure that you balance the need to protect life to protect the NHS with the recognition that you are right that the lockdown will have an impact on the mental and emotional well-being of many of our citizens and, of course by suppressing economic activity it also means that the wealth that the country needs to ensure that we have high quality public services is also affected, but the five tests that have been put in place and that D recalled earlier are a very good way to make sure we can make a proper judgment because the worst thing would be to prematurely relax the current measures to see a second spike that will not risk overwhelming the NHS and force us to lock down again, that would be the most dangerous, for of course I think we will take Steve yes so as a doctor I am very aware that the measures we have asked for have to ask him to people who comply with staying home and avoiding Social contact with cats can have detrimental effects in terms of health, but also emotional and social effects, as you have asked in your question and we are very interested, as if all my clinical colleagues and scientists, to make sure that as soon as we possibly can we can give advice allowing those measures to be relaxed as they have heard several times the damage that can be done in terms of health as a direct effect of the virus deaths from the virus have to be balanced with time against the damage that has been done around confinement and it is not easy for those to be two things that are not easy to reconcile, but I can say that we are very, very aware of the effects that confinement has both socially and emotionally and in health and that is why charting a path forward that allows those restrictions to be lifted over time and at the same time keeping the transmission rate low in the community is absolutely the goal we are working for. now to the questions from the representatives of the news organizations and the first one is from Chris Mason from the BBC Chris hello good afternoon to both of you Mr Gove the lockdown measures are beginning to ease how is the government going to persuade the people that it's safe to go out and about more and Professor Paris, how confident are you in the model that predicts what impact a particular rule change might have?

Thank you Chris, you are absolutely right, the British public have shown amazing stoicism and understanding of the need for lockdown measures and they quite rightly want to make sure that if they do relax, they do so in a way that ensure that the sacrifice of the British people has been worth it and that we continue to operate in a way that means public health comes first and that is why it is so important that we consult with employers and unions to make sure people understand the guidance on how to work safely. It is also important that we make it clear that whatever approach we take is a stage that we are not, as the First Minister of Scotland said, flipping a switch and going back to business as usual our staged approach is one that allows us to monitor the impact those changes are having on public health and, if necessary, in a targeted and localized way, that means we can pause or even reintroduce restrictions that may be necessary to deal with localized outbreaks of the disease and, of course it's also important that we make sure that people have the right orientation and the right safe working environment the right personal protective equipment too and that will vary from setting to setting the type of PPE you'll need if you're operating in intensive care is different from the type of PPE you might need in another public sector setting and ultimately the amazing success Matt Hancock's commitment to increased testing means that people can be more confident, along with the development of the track and trace approach to testing that is being put forward on the Isle of Wight, that we will be able to make sure that people who are suffering from the virus can be them and their contacts can be encouraged to stay home so that we can limit the potential for any outbreaks, yes, so it's in the modeling.

I think Chris is always the first point to make that modeling is just that it's a process of taking a set of assumptions, a set of knowledge, and predicting what's going to happen. in the future and the reality will always be a different fraud of the model, it will not be an exact replica of the model, and sometimes some of the assumptions that you can not be sure of and there are some that are not clear you know when you model so That being said, right at the beginning of this, the government or for the government produced a reasonable worst-case model that predicted what would happen if no action was taken for MIT to either prevent or mitigate or take action. reduce the level of community transmission of course no country has stood by and hasn't implemented some kind of social distancing measure so we won't know, we won't know what that would have been against that model because we all you've put in a set of measures that have meant that that didn't happen once the lockdown measures were in place and other other models would produce that took into account the intended compliance of the public with those lockdown measures and as I've said you've heard before the brief public has been really great at meeting them and in fact what we've certainly seen in the NHS in terms of predictions, those kinds ofmodel and models come from a variety of academic groups working together as predicted in terms of bed numbers, bed usage has followed the shape of those predictions, never perfectly tracking them in absolute numbers, but more or less following them less in the shape of what we have seen, that gives me some confidence that going forward the models are a reasonable way to predict what we might see and they predict that over the next month we will continue to see a decline in the amount of hospitalized patients. with kovat 19 the number of people in intensive care and indeed the number of deaths and of course that is what we are seeing in reality clearly we will need to do more modeling clearly it is important that various academic groups feed those models which is correct and that is what has aged another and model groups will never be an absolutely perfect prediction of reality but I trust that in the future they will give us a very g a good guide to what we are likely to see thank you very much was that houki chris there is something i wanted to follow up on where i wanted just a quicker clarification follow up with you mr gove we are very used to the mantra plastered on the lecterns you are standing behind and can expect a more subtle message to come through in the next phase to reflect what could be a more subtle and nuanced set of rules, well I think you're right that the message has reached the hearts of the people b British, I think what we need to do is make sure that the advice that we give on the ground is reassuring enough, I think it's about making sure that people feel that the advice that we give that I'm giving about how a workplace can be safe are sensible trustworthy backed by employers and unions i think that's the most important thing um and now i'll turn to dan huot from ITV hello sorry for that hunter and myself am going to have to mean to both of you and first First, on the NHS contact tracing app that was tested on the Isle of Wight and this week, given that you need fifty to sixty percent of the entire population and download this app once it's up and running.

Is it government policy to de-suppress the virus and how much it will dictate in the future what measures you have put in place or lifted in terms of lockdown and secondly in testing the number drops to 76,000 or so and how do you explain that sharp drop and in just 24 hours and how concerned are you about nearly 30,000 tests being dropped well thanks Dan um on the first one you are absolutely right that when it comes to contact tracing the more people download the app developed by the NHS, better. there are about 80,000 households on the Isle of Wight and obviously we'd like to see more than half of the problems if we can subscribe to the app, but it's amazing and obviously refers to two points that Chris Mason made about how people public-spirited they have been throughout this crisis and knowing that this is a contribution that we can all make to help keep our neighbors and our communities safer, I think that is a very, very powerful incentive and the leader of the other council white and Alouett is MP the excellent Bob sees that both have said that they believe it is in the interest of the island and the country that as many people as possible sign up for the application at the point of testing it is the case that you could wait more a weekend to testify with fewer people going to work I might have a decrease in the amount of testing that might happen at that time, but again, I didn't think of it by any means two tracks from l incredible achievement by the NHS and others and significantly increasing the amount of testing that is available yes so in implementation I think you are absolutely right it is one component of a number it is probably one component of a number of measures that will be needed I think it is Unlikely on its own to be the only measure or intervention to ensure that the virus is always under control, contact tracing will need to be carried out in the way we have always done, so that people follow leads like who you've contacted, that's exactly why public health england is recruiting many thousands of people to help with contact tracing and you'll have to put aside other measures we've grown accustomed to, such as whether you have symptoms and whether you you have the virus and if you test positive you will need to stay home for a period so it is a component the more people download and use it the likely contribution be greater, but it won't be the only contribution and the testing of the course will help us understand before it's implemented exactly what the likely contribution will be, so testing on the Isle of Wight is a very important phase in understanding how will you be using the app and what exactly will the contribution be thanks den, wanted to come back to something just in the app?

What evidence do you have perhaps from other countries or the research you've done so far suggests that this might actually work because clearly it's a very new so I guess I get the feeling from the pressure from the powers that be that it's not too reliant on this, well, again, Professor Paris, I'm blowing the point that it's an arrow in the quiver, but it's the case that other countries, Germany and France, are also developing apps and we want to make sure they're interoperable, the fact If other developed nations and our European friends and partners follow this path, I think it just underlines how smart NHS X was to invest and lead in this technology, but yes, other countries are developing or using apps, not all have implemented one, so you're absolutely right, there will be international learning as we go as to when these apps will roll out to some of the far flung countries.

Eastern countries have been used successfully, so there is evidence that it can be used as part of a series of measures, but I think even in those countries, like Singapore and other countries, it is a series of measures, not a single measure, so we'll do that, we'll learn some of that as we test, then as we roll it out and I think the other important point to make is that this is never going to be about a single set of measures that you freeze and then it doesn't change over time. I think measures will always need to be reviewed and adjusted based on what the infection is doing and what the reality of the situation is, but enforcement will be a major component of that in the future. to Indigo Gilmour of Channel Four News Indigo Mr.

Gove, do you agree with your transport secretary that if crazy math tests had been done sooner, many lives could have been saved and, Mr. Gove, keep telling us that you are on the lookout for So much of the PPE problem once again? today, but a BMA report released today said half of doctors had to get their own personal protective equipment because the government didn't. What would you say to the families of frontline NHS workers who have died without proper protective equipment? the in them needed well, thank you and continue with the first point about the tests again.

I think there will be a time when we get this virus under control when we can ask ourselves some deep, probing questions about the lessons we can learn as a country from managing this virus in its early stages, I would just say the incredible achievement of Matt Hancock Jim Bethel, our NHS and others to ensure that we can increase the number of tests, I think that has been an example of what the public sector and the private sector working together under very strong political leadership can achieve but of course at your In due course we will have the opportunity to look back and reflect and consider what we did right and what we did wrong, no doubt this The government, like all governments, will have made mistakes, but it will be impossible to determine exactly what the areas of greatest concern until some time in the future, when we have all the information we need.

PPE I would never say we were on top I would always say we were doing our best and naturally any of us are concerned if people on the front lines don't have the proper PPE but that is the case as you will know that the BMA does an excellent job mainly, but not exclusively, of representing people in the primary care GPS etc. quite a bit of their own equipment in any case, but of course we want to make sure we do everything at NHS level and beyond to support everyone who has the right personal protective equipment and again there will be an opportunity in due course. look back and see what we've done right and what we haven't done right when it comes to making sure that frontline workers get everything they need in the meantime, even though our whole focus is on making sure that we can also do a It is possible to support people who are risking everything to take care of us, so I hope it helps, but you may want to follow me. death is a tragedy and we want to make sure we do everything we can to support those on the front lines in the NHS and as I say it will be a time where we can affect what could have been done better in the meantime what What we need to do is make sure, as Lord Dayton is doing, as the Department of Health is doing, as every arm of government is doing, that we use all the tools at our disposal to increase production of aprons, gloves, visors and others. the equipment that people on the front lines need is of course important to recognize and I know you know that the range of personal protective equipment that might be needed in one setting will be different than in another, but Steve, you may I want to say a little bit more about PPE, obviously as a doctor who worked on the front lines for many years, I've said it before and I'll say it again.

I know how important it is that PPE be provided to my colleagues, my friends on the front lines I know it has been challenging I know the government has been working very, very hard I know it is an international market that is under significant stress as everyone countries trying to buy PPE a couple of weeks ago I know you were worried about gowns the position of gowns has actually improved a bit in the last few weeks so depending on the item of PPE things will get better over time , but it's a challenge for exactly the reasons we said but it's absolutely critical as you said that the government stays on top of that challenge and PPE is provided to front line staff yes and Steve is right I mean it doesn't take away the responsibilities of none of us in government, but it is a global challenge and Channel Four New TV viewers and others will have seen some of the protests and other countries in France and Germany as doctors have q Coupled with the lack of PPE, as I say, that doesn't take away a second of our responsibility to do even better, but it does.

I mean, I think people recognize that this is a global Travon. Chris, the hope of the telecom mask, you guys grew up, today you talked about one-way systems at the stations and the start of the workday was shaken. How many years could it take let me start quickly miss a professor paris nightingale hospitals are empty where they built a mistake or to be filled the second wave just quick cover the rapids what is the virus our value today what was the exact date last week and what exact time the UK went through the peak and that's for very important questions Chris on the first one about when can we go back to normal I think people have used the phrase a new normal and so I think I understand what they've been talking about to imply is that we can begin, we hope, as you rightly point out, since they, as not all, come down to easing some of the restrictions, but we have to do it cautiously and tropically.

The sector was right to say that we can start to see maybe more people use public transport, but as long as they are helped to stagger or control the times that they use public transport and the way in which people have already adapted to how they could use supermarkets and food stores and so on ultimately unless and until we have a vaccine i suspect we will have to live with some degree of restriction due to the nature of the virus but obviously we want to do that whenever possible and in accordance with our public health measures restore people's lives as close to normal as possible, but you asked three detailed technical questions that Steve can answer, but they are so precise that I think they can elude any ability of any scientist or doctor who answers precisely right I'll give it a try so first on how long the new normal will have to last as that's to be expected that an answer that none of us can give at this time if I remind you at all, but this is a virus that at the end of last year it was not known if it had not been in the human population and therefore the population of all the world was not immune to it, so we have only known anything about this virus for four months and it is really difficult to know how it iswill develop this in the coming months and years but i think i can be sure of a few things first of all is that the scientific response to this virus is probably the best for any new virus the fact that it was sequence this genetic sequence became known within a few weeks of it being identified as sites can ramp up very quickly including the ability to get vaccines produced and start testing them and also of course start using drugs and understanding what drugs are likely to bind to the virus or to parts of the machinery of the body that are affected by the virus itself, which means that we can proceed at a rate that the laboratory is probably confident has not been the case in any other prior to our pandemic, that gives us hope that that we may come to a solution, whether it be a vaccine or, indeed, medicines before we can have any hope of ten twenty years ago, but it is impossible to say when that will be, but But it's certainly true to say that we're going to have to adjust to a new normal until we get to that point on the second question, which was what were the mockingbirds, a built-in error, absolutely 100 percent no, and if you remember I was talking a bit earlier in response to another question. that if you turn the clock back a month or two, we were seeing a rise in the number of cases of infections in the UK, we were seeing pictures from around the world of healthcare systems being overwhelmed and we hadn't put in place or were about to implementing a number of social distancing measures without absolutely knowing how the public would respond to that and it would have been foolish not to have planned for extra capacity within the NHS, we did that in a number of ways including nightingales the fact that we didn't need to use all that ability is actually good news because it means that the public has complied with social distancing measures, they've started to flatten that curve, and we've seen less

admissions

and ultimately fewer deaths.

I could have seen if it is if this virus had been allowed to spread unchecked and the initial worst case scenarios, as I said, no country has allowed them to play out, would have meant many, many deaths and great pressure on health services. so I think it would be a hundred thousand times more critical if the NHS hadn't put in that extra capacity and got overwhelmed, they would rightly be asking why we hadn't gone every mile. that we could possibly go put that extra capacity in so the NA mockingbirds weren't built by mistake and we may still need them we're not over this yet and although government policy and scientific advice is to try to ensure that the virus will do not start to spread Widely again we can never be absolutely sure and so for the next couple of months we need to keep that extra capacity until we have more certainty and then thirdly when was the spike so I think that's a question that can't really be answered accurately. as you've heard, because first of all there have been a series of Spikes, there have been spikes in debt, spikes in hospital admissions, and the Spikes have happened at different times throughout the country because different regions of the country have been at different stages , but as you saw in the slides presented at the beginning, most of the measures that we're looking at started to wind down starting in mid-April, so I think broadly speaking, we saw a variety of measures stall out in mid-April.

April. turn now to see in a row sorry chris you wanted to come back forgive me me our body washed up today sorry oh yeah so again sorry you did that was a quarter so i think safari violence has said i'm the medical director who thinks our value is around 0.7 we are measuring it directly at the moment through the work of the Office for National Statistics i think it is being measured by randomly testing people in the community once the data has been submitted for us once the data is available I think it will be better to give a more precise figure but I think as patrick also explained I think it's really impossible to come up with a single precise absolute number because across the country in different settings It's going to be a little different so I think you'll always see a range but with better data that range will go down thank you very much thank you Chris and now we'll talk about Sienna Rogers from the labo lists rales. a plan to release low risk prisoners and up to 4,000 were expected to be released but after mistakes were made the plan was halted so mr.

Gope, can you tell us how many inmates assessed at risk in total and how many pregnant inmates have now been released and self-harm rates in English and Welsh prisons increased by 14% last year, so with visits canceled at the moment, are you worried? about the welfare of the people in the cells 23 hours a day Thank you Sienna thank you um regarding the early release of prisoners the Lord Chancellor and his team developed a package of which the early release of prisoners was only one part in order to be able to to make sure we could restrict the spread of the virus within the prisoner state and the reason for that was to reduce the number of prisoner state cases that would be in our NHS, so our main focus as always was to protect the NHS and there was a number of changes that the Chancellor of Law made to the prison system to increase capacity and include clustering within particular prisons and restrictions on prisoner transfers, but one part of it as you very rightly pointed out was capacity in specific circumstances to release some prisoners prematurely and a series of tests were applied, it was necessary that their first Their principal offense was of a particular type so that they would not pose a risk to the public and it had to be the case that they were close to the time when they would have been released anyway and, as you quite rightly point out, the prisoners at front of the queue were those pregnant women who were in prison.

I know there were at least 33 people who had been released I think the number is higher now but after this press conference I will of course speak to the Ministry of Justice and make sure they have the accurate figures but as I say I think it was about 33 that had been released this time last week. I think those were the confirmed numbers, but we'll get the absolutely accurate numbers for you and I'll give them to you. Yeah, so about the health of the prison in general. i think we should always be doing everything we can to support prison health made about this time last year i spent a morning in a prison in the north of england looking at prison health services and was incredibly impressed with the dedication of staff inside the prison, but also staff and general practitioners coming in from outside to provide support and clearly in a time of crisis, a time of emergency like the coronavirus, it's really important that we put an additional focus on ensuring that health At the same time, it's important to ensure that we maintain safety and reduce the possibility of outbreaks and the spread of kovat, but that's a very important balance and reflects the balance in a sense in the community that was targeted. one of the questions above about how to balance the type of measures you need to put in place to stop the spread of the varicose vein virus and ensuring that the potential goes down Aspects of that are also properly managed, so yeah, I think it's incredibly important that we do that. doing at this time to prepare for the increase in prison population that is expected when restrictions are lifted and normal basic activities resume, you are right that at the time that poop was dumped from our courts into our prisons it has been minor and that helped us manage the situation in the prison and where during the course of this week we will be looking at the ministry with the implementation group that I chair how we can make sure that there are more criminal cases that are heard properly and also how we can make sure that the prison state can handle a part of that is me ensuring we have access to additional facilities and I think it is the case that a former secure juvenile offender training center in Medway has been made available to the state prison, but it is also the case that the state president is working with energy and others to ensure make sure there are enough spaces as, as you rightly point out, more criminal cases are heard. to Ahmed versi from Muslim News hi, I would like to understand that NHS England and Public Health England have conducted an inquiry into the disproportionate impact on 19 covered in B AME communities.

I would like to know what the terms of reference are. for this query and the names of the members of this query and secondly why every time you ask questions about this impact of coffee 19 or more are lost proportionally we are just communities the answer we always get is for biological reasons that we might talk about because of the high prevalence of diabetes, heart conditions, etc., don't you think there are more structural issues like racism and discrimination going on in the community? and just as in national health, I think there are very powerful questions and challenges, often the work that is being done to look at what appears to be a significant additional number of deaths among the B SMA population is being done by a variety of of people in the public health NHS England and of course we are being supported by Sir Trevor Phillips and others to look at those numbers and of course there is a need to look at these things as fully appreciated in the r and may be the case for that among some minority populations there is, as you indicate with the reference to diabetes, a raesha prevalence of comorbidities that may be a factor, but may also be the factor that, as we know, inequality can contribute to public health outcomes and It may be that we need to take a step back and look more broadly at some of the inequities that exist within our society, but I certainly wouldn't want to prejudge that. question and I certainly know that Steve knows a lot more about these questions than I do from a scientific point of view.

Steve, yes, so it's an incredibly important question or set of questions, which is why the research is being carried out by public health England. In England's NHS, we don't have the core expertise. or experts in the particular areas of work who need to look into this, which is an area in which public health England has expertise. Of course we will support public health England, but the chief medical officer has asked public health England to look into that. I don't have a full list of the names of the people that will be involved in that, but I'm sure that will be available, as you've said that it's possible that some of the underlying conditions are associated or more prevalent in certain groups.

Ethnicity can be important because they are also real risk factors which mean you are more likely to get the virus or suffer the complications, but as you rightly say, that might not be the only reason and it is really important that Public Health England and colleagues who are working on this go with an open mind and look at all the possible causes. Biological causes may well be a part, but it is important that they be analyzed together. I definitely agree. with you there thank you very much wanted to follow up yes you mentioned Trevor Phillips there are two issues one is he recently said the death phase of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities was not significantly higher than the general population however However, all the reports that I have read that the Pakistani and Bangladeshi committees have a much higher death rate than the general population and the reason they gave, which is very surprising, is that because they are doing ritual ablutions, what kind of person are you. they're employing that kind of conclusion, well I'm not aware of those comments but I do know that Trevor Phillips as chair of the Equalities and Human Ri The Fighting Commission was always someone who was driven by data and public health England it was doing nothing more than following the data to come to the appropriate conclusions and of course we need to look at, as we discussed earlier, and Steve potentially mentioned some biological factors. but also as your question implied, perhaps some economic structural factors that can lead to inequality in Latino equality may have been the result of discrimination, but we need to look at all of these things reportedly and I think anyone willing to give their time who is a distinguished public servant like Trevor Phillips to help us in this effort is a supporter we welcome you so thank you very much that is the end of this press conference and I hope one of my colleagues will join you at the podium tomorrow thank you very much Michael Gove, they are puttingEnd to the latest Downing Street corona virus briefing.

We will only remind you of some of the main points of that press. conference just finished well, Mr Gove told us that yesterday more than 315 people had died with the corona virus in hospital nursing homes and in the community at large, this means a total of twenty eight thousand 446 people had died after testing positive for the corona virus in the UK and that's as of 5:00 p.m. Yesterday on the subject of testing, Mr Gove said that 76,496 coronavirus tests had been carried out in the UK on Saturday and, announcing efforts to help with the future lifting of the lockdown, said that the government will be testing the new tests can trace procedures on the Isle of Wight next week before offering it more widely later this month, well a health correspondent, Richard Galpin, has been hearing all that, Richard, lots of information, as there always is let's just take a little closer look at the statistics that we hear in terms of the numbers that we've heard I mean the big picture that was explained is that in all the major areas, infections, deaths etc the numbers are going down overall albeit slowly but there are still some very high numbers for example if you look at the number of people who have tested positive hundred eighty-six thousand people, so it's a large number of people and or obviously, the concern about causing more deaths, etc. when you have this number of cases and as you say we now have over 28,500 people who have died, that number is getting clearer and closer to Italy and I know that obviously we can't necessarily compare these, it's obviously problematic, but it might look like Britain will go ahead and have the highest number of deaths in Europe.

We don't know, obviously, yes, but that seems like a possibility on the bright side, for example. the number of people in hospitals is going down and down now it's down to 14,000 200 at the peak it was something like 18,000 so those numbers are going down significantly and obviously that's very important so on the subject of the tests, I guess it's worth noting. that many more people are getting tested, aren't they? So if more people test positive, some might say it's as a result of more people getting tested. Yes, it's a very good thing. t that testing is now going on significantly very significant numbers although they're down a bit now isn't it on the forums around a hundred thousand at the end of last week now they're down to around 76,000 but that It was explained during the press conference as potentially due to the weekend, when things tend to lag, what else stood out to you in the briefing?

There was a very good question when they said you know how you can convince people that it's going to be safe to come out of lockdown as and when that actually happens and Michael Gove gave a pretty long answer, I mean obviously focus on the needs to be safe at the doing this as outdated Lee is the number one priority but he said they would consult with employers and unions and he is told it should be a phased approach so he can monitor the impact of changes and if necessary re- impose some lockdown measures in a localized way and that presumably involves maybe different regions, different cities, different towns, I'm not quite sure to what level it would go, but he's talking about differences between different parts of the country, potentially if infections start to spread increase in particular areas due to the lifting of the lockdown and that is I think the first time we have heard a cabinet minister speak lar about the measures that are used locally to use the land twice he did not do it at all sir.

I think he is absolutely right. I think this is significant. see a little more of the thinking of the government that this is the way to be able to move forward and you don't know that very large parts of the country can move forward, but you know and then, if necessary, other parts where there were problems, then they can be dealt with this way localized so it doesn't affect everybody in the country because now we've been in lockdown for quite some time and obviously it has potentially very serious impacts on people's lives in a lot of different ways well as you say we're about to go in i think that the seventh week of lockdown, this is an important week, isn't it, because now we are going to, we are waiting for this great plan? from Prime Minister Boris Johnson, we think it will obviously take this week if they will hit the May 7 deadline, which is when they have to review the lockdown measures one more time, they have to do it every three weeks or so. we're waiting for this really crucial announcement from the Prime Minister on how things could gradually pick up or how they could ease up and he's talking about you know this, certainly Michael Gove was saying this would be about getting the economy going again. how to get the whole economy moving how to get kids back to school and how to get workers to work because of us obviously transportation is a problem so how to make transportation work so people can go to work and then and that might be how you can do that safely and then also people once they're at work who can actually be at work in a safe environment so many questions so many issues that need to be dealt with that Richard a lot of things a health correspondent Richard Galpin there sees the headlines as they happen and watch BBC News live on the app and get the full story with the BBC decoder UK slash news follow the story for the latest news with BBC News