UK social distancing measures making a difference to the spread of COVID-19, government says
pharmafile | March 31, 2020 | News story | Manufacturing and Production | British Coronavirus, COVID-`9, coronavirus, coronavirus uk
Social distancing measures are slowing down the spread of coronavirus and keeping pressure off the NHS, according to the UK’s Chief Scientific Adviser.
Sir Patrick Vallance told a news briefing at Downing Street on Monday that the government’s strict measures that it enforced last week are “making a difference” as the NHS admission rate has been constant, at around 1,000 new patients a day. He added this: “shows that it’s going up not in an increasing amount but in a constant amount which may suggest that we’re already beginning to see some effect.
“I do expect that number to continue. I expect people coming every day to be about that, it may go up a little bit. And in two or three weeks you would expect that to stabilise and to start to go down a bit.”
He also commented that while it is not a fast acceleration, the government do expect things to get worse, due to people possibly contracting the virus before social distancing measures came into effect just over a week ago.
The government has announced that train use was down by 95% and bus use was down by 75% and 20,000 former NHS staff have returned to work to help the strained NHS.
As of 30 March, there have been 22,141 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,408 people have died from complications due to the virus. Deaths per day have also seen a declined as of late, from 260 death on Saturday, to 209 on Sunday with a further 180 today.
Conor Kavanagh
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