'Britain's coronavirus peak will maintain next few weeks'
The peak of the United Kingdom's coronavirus outbreak will be slightly earlier than previously thought and can come in another few weeks, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Friday. "The modelling shows that that peak will be slightly sooner than previous, within the next few weeks nonetheless it is quite, very sensitive to just how many people follow the social distancing guidelines," Hancock told BBC radio. Britain's health minister said on Friday he had "no idea" if Prime Minister Boris Johnson's week-long isolation after testing positive for coronavirus would end on Friday.
"I don't know about his own private medical condition. What I do know is I've been dealing with him each day through this crisis," Health Minister Matt Hancock told ITV. "He's been working incredibly hard." Asked if Johnson would be out of isolation on Friday, Hancock said: "I've zero idea but what I know is he's still working." Johnson announced a week ago that he previously tested positive and will be isolating in Downing Street.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has vowed to improve the country's coronavirus testing efforts after facing a barrage of criticism for screening fewer people than other nations at an identical stage of the epidemic. The quantity of deaths linked to confirmed cases of the coronavirus reached a new UK high on Wednesday, the most recent figures available, with 569 deaths recorded per day, taking the full total to 2,921.
Those deaths came as the British Medical Association (BMA) released new ethics guidelines for doctors which means that older patients with a minimal potential for survival could have life-saving ventilators removed so the machines can be given to healthier patients. Newspaper headlines on Thursday blasted the government's failure to test more, even in typically loyal British media outlets.
"Why mass testing should be our No. 1 priority -- and just why we lag behind all of those other world," said the Telegraph's online edition. A spokesman for the Prime Minister told reporters Thursday a total of 10,412 tests were carried out in the united states on Tuesday. A total of 2,800 NHS personnel have been tested at drive-in testing facilities, Downing Street said.
"We acknowledge that more must be done with regards to testing. We need to be testing more people and we ought to be making progress very quickly," the spokesman said. Many health staff are self-isolating after showing possible symptoms of the coronavirus but could go back to work sooner if testing showed these were not infected.
The most recent figures come eight days after Johnson asserted that the UK was "massively ramping up" its nationwide testing program, and would continue to raise the number of tests completed each week.
The Prime Minister, who's himself in self-isolation after testing positive for the virus, posted a video to Twitter on Wednesday evening where he lamented a "sad, sad day" in mention of the prior day's death toll of 563. He stressed his efforts to improve the country's testing capacity, and also listing the measures already put in place to manage the pandemic and urging persons to respect the restrictions currently set up.
