Coronavirus: Dominic Raab confirms UK lockdown to continue as he tells the country 'we're not done yet'
Dominic Raab led the latest Downing Street press conference.
3 min read
Dominic Raab has confirmed that the UK's coronavirus lockdown is to continue as experts claimed the social distancing measures are beginning to work.
The Foreigh Secretary, who is standing in for Boris Johnson as he battles the illness in hospital, said the UK needed to "double down" on the restrictions imposed nearly three weeks ago.
He said it will be another week before a final decision is taken on whether the lockdown can be eased - but he insisted it was important that people needed to "keep going" until the death rate begins to fall.
The latest figures showed that a total of 7,978 have been killed by the disease in Britain, and increase of 881 in the last 24 hours.
However, chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance said there were signs of hope because the the number of new cases and hospital admissions was "flattening".
Speaking after chairing the latest meeting of the Government's emergency Cobra meeting, Mr Raab said: "As we look forward to the Easter weekend, I know some people are going to start wondering 'is it time to ease up on the rules'?
"So I have to say thank you for your sacrifices but also we’re not done yet. We must keep going."
The Foreign Secretary added: "It’s been almost three weeks and we’re starting to see the impact of the sacrifices we've all made.
"But the deaths are still rising. And we havent’ yet reached the peak of the virus. So it’s still too early to lift the measure that we’ve put in place
"We must stick to the plan and we must continue to be guided by the science.
"Our top priority, our immedaite priority, remains to slow the spread of the virus and to save as many lives as possible and that’s why we have to contiue to ask you all to keep complying with the guidance."
Pointing to data on the number of new coronavirus cases, Sir Patrick told the latest Downing Street press conference that the social distancing measures were working because the rate of new cases was rising slowly.
He said: "As a result of stopping the transmission in the community, we stop new cases appearing.
"And this slide, the numbers go up and down a bit, but what you can see is it’s not taking off in that sharp uptake - it’s not gone sky high. And it anything there might even be some flattening."
Sir Patrick also drew hope from the numbers being admitted to hospital, saying: "It’s not gone up in that steep way and again if anything, we’re beginning to see the first signs of this levelling off.
"Too early to be sure, too early to know that this is on the way down. But it’s not got that fast upswing that it would have had had we all, not been doing what we are doing with these difficult measures of social distancing."
The chief scientific adviser said the number of patients needing critical care was also under control.
"It’s a steady increase in numbers which might, just might, be beginning to flatten off," he said. "But it’s certainly not accelerating."
But Sir Patrick said the number of deaths will continue to rise "for a few weeks", meaning the lockdown must stay in place.
He said: "The social distancing that we're all doing is breaking transmission, it’s stopping the hospital admissions, beginning that flattening off, still unbelievably busy but beginning to see that flatten off.
"It’s preventing more people going into intensive care and it will prevent deaths. It's incredibly important that we continue to do what we’re doing."
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