UK hospital death toll rises to 18,100 as health secretary says 15 social care staff are among those to die with Covid-19
- Starmer grills Raab over care home deaths
- Coronavirus latest – at a glance
- Private firm running UK PPE stockpile was sold in middle of pandemic
- Coronavirus – latest global updates
- See all our coronavirus coverage
The most striking thing from that press conference was what Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, said about the so-called “exit strategy” from the lockdown. Downing Street has reportedly banned the use of the term “exit strategy” from its planning. That is because it is getting harder to see how there will be any firm exit from some aspects of social distancing for quite a long time to come. Officials, and to a lesser extent ministers, have been signalling it for a while, but Whitty was this afternoon more explicit than anyone else has been about this at these press conferences.
Here are his key quotes on this point.
We have to be very realistic if people are hoping it’s suddenly going to move from where we are in lockdown to where suddenly into everything is gone, that is a wholly unrealistic expectation
We are going to have to do a lot of things for really quite a long period of time, the question is what is the best package and this is what we’re trying to work out.
In the long run, the exit from this is going to be one of two things, ideally. A vaccine, and there are a variety of ways they can be deployed … or, and/or, highly effective drugs so that people stop dying of this disease even if they catch it, or which can prevent this disease in vulnerable people.
Until we have those, and the probability of having those any time in the next calendar year are incredibly small and I think we should be realistic about that.
The increase in confirmed cases of Covid-19 in prisons in England and Wales appears to have slowed, daily figures have shown.
There were 294 confirmed cases of the coronavirus among prisoners in 66 prisons, a 2% rise in 24 hours, the lowest increase in cases since the Ministry of Justice started releasing the figures. There are around 81,500 prisoners in England and Wales across 117 prisons.
Continue reading…