The UK is seeing a downward trend in the number of people in hospital with coronavirus, but it is “too early” to say if the country is winning the fight, a health chief says.
Professor Stephen Powis, the national medical director of NHS England, said the most marked decreases in Covid-19 hospitalisations have been in London and the Midlands.
He credited Britons obeying the lockdown and social distancing measures for the apparent decline in new cases and a plateauing in deaths.
However, Professor Powis said the lockdown has “begun to pay off” but warned cases could soar and there could be a second wave if Britons begin become complacent.
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Speaking at Sunday’s briefing at Downing Street, he told reporters the benefit of social distancing was beginning to be felt in the stabilisation of the number of new cases.
He said: “You can see we now have a very definite trend of a reduced number of people in hospitals – that is most marked in London.
“But there is the beginnings of that in the Midlands and other areas of the UK.
“That is definitely showing that our compliance with social distancing is proving to be beneficial, it is reducing the transmission and spread of the virus.”
Professor Powis noted there had been a decline in the number of critical care beds used for Covid-19 patients.
He added: “Those benefits have occurred not by luck, but because people have complied with the instructions that we have all been given and they have followed the science.
“The science of this is quite straight forward, if we reduce the number of people that can be infected from an individual person who has the virus to below on average one, then the virus starts to go into decline and the number of infections starts to fall.”
The NHS boss said the lockdown efforts “have begun to pay off”, but warned they would only continue to pay off if Britons continue to comply with social distancing measures.
He added: “My fear, as the fear of all of us, is that those curves won’t continue to be on a down trend but will start to go in an upward trend.
“We are not at a point where any of us can be absolutely confident that that is not going to be the case – we want to avoid a second peak, we want to avoid a rise.
“I can’t emphasise enough that this is not the time to say we’ve done a good job.”
Speaking alongside Professor Powis, Environment Secretary George Eustice said 669,850 Covid-19 tests had been carried out in the UK – including 29,058 on Saturday.
He told a Downing Street briefing that some 152,840 people have tested positive – an increase of 4,463 cases since the day before.
He added: “15,953 people are currently in hospital with the coronavirus in the UK, down from 16,411 on April 25.
“And sadly, of those hospitalised with the virus, 20,732 have now died, and that is an increase of 413 fatalities since yesterday.
“We express our deepest condolences to the families and friends of these victims.”
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Asked why the Government did not record coronavirus-related deaths in care homes in the same way it has done for hospitals, Professor Powis said there was a “difference” in the way data is collected.
He said: “In the NHS we work with several hundred hospitals to collect that data on a daily basis.
“We are collecting the data for people who have died in hospital who we know have tested positive.
“All those organisations are within the NHS family who are used to putting in daily reports to NHS England.
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“In the care home sector, there are many, many thousands of care homes operated by many, many independent organisations, so that sort of daily rhythm of reporting in is just not something that occurs in care homes in the same way.”
Schools will have to adhere to social distancing measures should they reopen during the pandemic, the Environment Secretary said.
Mr Eustice added: “Dominic Raab addressed this earlier this morning. And stressed the importance, that even as you start to consider steps such as that (reopening schools), it would still be important in such a setting to have social distancing measures.”
Asked about tests for care home residents and staff, he said: “We have been ramping up capacity to do those test.
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“It currently stands at over 50,000 a day. We have started to invite large numbers of people working in the care sector and care homes to undertake those tests and significant numbers have.”
Mr Eustice dismissed media reports that all travellers returning to the UK from abroad will have to be quarantined on arrival for 14 days as “speculation”.
He said: “As we move to a new phase at some point in the future – we are not there yet – international travel could become a more significant part of the risk to manage.
“At the moment, all of the evidence suggests it is only a tiny proportion of the cause of the coronavirus outbreak – if we got to that point, a number of measures would be considered but no decisions have been taken in this phase yet.”
Mr Eustice added: “We’ve made a conscious decision as a country not to close
our borders because we need to keep trade flowing and should there be medical
advice in the future, as we move to new stages, that this is an area that should
be looked at and considered, that is the time to do that.”
Professor Powis repeated his plea to motorists not to breach lockdown rules after data showed traffic levels creeping up by 3% compared to last week.
“We need to ensure that this does not mean that we are not continuing to comply with the government instructions on social distancing which are of course so key to ensuring that we get on top and control the spread of this virus,” he said.
He added mobility data from tech giant Apple also showed “a little hint of more people walking and driving” as more people requested directions online.
