By Ben Kerrigan-
The Uk is ”learning lessons every day Uk prime minister Boris Johnson told a press briefing today. Mr Johnson said he thought it was “right to make our period of lockdown coincide.. with the peak of the epidemic, adding that broadly speaking, we did the right thing at the right time.”
In response to questions that a more stringent lockdown should have been imposed sooner, he said: “Don’t forget, it’s a very very demanding thing to ask a population to do , very tough, and so I think it was completely right to make our period of lockdown coincide as far as possible with the peak of the epidemic.”He said he wanted to wait until the end of the pandemic before making international comparisons” between the UK’s coronavirus death total and other nations. At the moment, I just think the data is not clear,” he said.
I think we are “past the peak and on the downward slope” of the coronavirus outbreak, prime minister Boris Johnson said in today’s press briefing. Johnson said a lockdown exit plan was to be announced next week. At the daily Downing Street COVID-19 briefing, the prime minister also revealed he will next week set out the government’s exit plan – which could include Britons being told to wear face masks for easing lockdown measures. Mr Johnson thanked the public for their “massive collective effort” in protecting the NHS during the coronavirus outbreak.
“At no stage has our NHS been overwhelmed, no patient went without a ventilator, no patient was deprived of intensive care,” he said.
“It is thanks to that massive collective effort to shield the NHS that we avoided an uncontrollable and catastrophic epidemic where the reasonable worst-case scenario was 500,000 deaths.”I can confirm today that for the first time we are past the peak of this disease.”We are past the peak and on the downward slope.”
We have come through the peak – or rather we’ve come under what could have been a vast peak, as though we’ve been going through some huge alpine tunnel and we can now see the sunlight and pasture ahead of us,” he said.”And so it is vital that we do not now lose control and run slap into a second and even bigger mountain.” He said to avoid the “disaster” of a second spike in infections, the government would do “nothing” that risks lifting the “R” – or reproduction rate of the virus back above one; which would mean each infected person was passing on the disease to at least one other person.He warned a second spike in infections would cause “lasting economic damage” to the UK.
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