Britain’s coronavirus lockdown will remain in place for at least three weeks and will not be lifted until there is a sustainable fall in the daily death rate and the rate of infection is demonstrably down to a manageable level.
Foreign secretary Dominic Raab, who is deputising for Boris Johnson, said social distancing measures were working but that the government's scientific advisers concluded that lifting them now would be a risk both to public health and the economy.
“There is light at the end of the tunnel but we are now at both a delicate and a dangerous stage in this pandemic. If we rush to relax the measures that we have in place we would risk wasting all the sacrifices and all the progress that has been made,” he said.
“That would risk a quick return to another lockdown with all the threat to life that a second peak to the virus would bring and all the economic damage that a second lockdown would carry.”
Mr Raab was speaking after Britain’s deaths in hospitals from coronavirus rose to 13,729, an increase of 861 since Wednesday. He declined to say how long the restrictions are likely to remain in place beyond the next three weeks but identified five tests before they could be lifted.
The conditions are: the National Health Service (NHS) must be able to cope with the number of infections; there should be a sustained and consistent fall in the daily death rate, which is currently the highest in Europe; reliable data should show the rate of infection was down to manageable levels; testing and personal protective equipment must be adequate for future demand; and there must be confidence that lifting measures will not risk another peak in infections and deaths.
Below 1 per cent
Mr Raab said the government’s scientific advisory panel Sage believed the rate of infection, or the R value, is now below 1 per cent in the community in Britain.
“As in other countries we have issues with the virus spreading in some hospitals and in care homes and in sum, the very clear advice we have received is that any change to our social distancing measures now would risk a significant increase in the spread of the virus,” Mr Raab said.
“That would threaten a second peak of the virus and substantially increase the number of deaths. It would undo the progress we have made to date and as a result would require an even longer period of the more restrictive social distancing measures. So early relaxation would do more damage to the economy over a longer period.”
Chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance suggested that the restrictions were likely to be lifted in stages, with some measures removed earlier than others. But he played down speculation that the elderly would have to remain under restrictions for longer than others.
“The aim there is to try and do that in a way that allows everything to start moving more towards normal – not to segregate certain groups and say there is a differential approach towards this,” he said.
