CORONAVIRUS infections are starting to fall in the community – but are continuing to rise in hospitals and care homes, Dominic Raab has said.
The First Secretary of State said that while there was “light at the end of the tunnel”, Britain would remain in lockdown for another three weeks to avoid risking a second peak.
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Mr Raab, who is deputising for Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he recovers from the virus, said the rate of infection – the R0 value – was “almost certainly below one in the community”.
It means that infected people were passing the disease on to fewer than one other person on average.
“But overall we still don’t have the infection rate down as far as we need to,” he told the Downing Street daily press briefing.
He said there were still “issues with the virus spreading in some hospitals and in care homes”, adding: “The very clear advice we received is that any change to our social distancing measures now would risk a significant increase in the spread of the virus.
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“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.”
Reiterating Mr Raab’s point, chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance said it’s important to look at the “R” value in care homes and hospitals as well as the community.
He said: “It’s not true that the ‘R’ value is necessarily below one in every hospital or care home.”
‘Good place’
Sir Patrick added that Britain is in a “good place” in tackling the coronavirus outbreak – but social distancing must be maintained for it to continue.
The country’s top scientist said the number of coronavirus cases in Britain was flattening and there are some signs of a decrease, but added that even a small relaxation in restrictions could lead to the infection rate increasing above one again.
“At the moment, this is looking in a good place, it’s beginning to come down … and it’s important that all the measures that we’re taking stay in place.”
Sir Patrick said that the way out of the current situation was vaccines and therapeutics.
“Those are going to be critically important,” he said.
England’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty said that developing an effective serology test was important in establishing what proportion of the population had been infected as well as finding a vaccine.
He said there were “substantial bodies of work” going on among the academic sector, commercial suppliers and Public Health England as well as Government laboratories at Porton Down to find one.
We are definitely not there in either of the issues of getting a serology (test) or getting a sampling frame
Prof Chris Whitty
Prof Whitty added that they did not have a serology test they could have a lot of reliance on although it could give a “ranging shot”.
“We do expect to have quite crude early data. That definitely needs to be improved on,” he said.
“We are moving very fast in this area scientifically, but we are definitely not there in either of the issues of getting a serology (test) or getting a sampling frame, but we will probably have a crude ranging shot soon.”
Death toll
It comes as the Department of Health said the Covid-19 death toll in hospitals in the UK had reached 13,729 as of 5pm on Wednesday, up 861 on the figure the day before.
Earlier, Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned it will take time for life to return to normal as a Government scientific adviser questioned whether ministers had done enough work on an exit strategy.
Professor Neil Ferguson from Imperial College London said: “I think there’s a lot of discussion. I would like to see action accelerated.
“We need to put in place an infrastructure, a command and control structure, a novel organisation for this.”
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Prof Ferguson called for more co-ordination, adding that “we have limited leeway to release current measures unless we have something new to put in their place”.
He said before restrictions are eased, more testing will be needed to isolate individual cases and trace their contacts to keep future outbreaks under control.
“And I should say, it’s not going to be going back to normal,” he added.
“We will have to maintain some form of social distancing, a significant level of social distancing, probably indefinitely until we have a vaccine available.”
On Wednesday evening, health minister Nadine Dorries took to Twitter to urge journalists to stop calling for an exit strategy, adding: “There is only one way we can ‘exit’ full lockdown and that is when we have a vaccine.”
Mr Hancock said he agreed that things will not go back to how they were soon.
Mr Hancock told Sky News: “Well I think what Nadine was saying is the idea that we’ll immediately… we’ll just switch off all of the measures and return to some kind of… to things exactly as they were – that is not likely in the short-term.”
Elsewhere, captain Tom Moore, 99, who has walked 100 lengths of his garden to generate cash for the NHS has been praised as “an inspiration to us all” as his fundraising campaign passed the £14 million mark.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) also released data confirming the death rate for men with coronavirus in England and Wales is twice as high as that of women.
Downing Street also confirmed that a review will take place into why people from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds appear to be disproportionately affected by coronavirus.
