Coronavirus rate of infection 'much reduced and Covid-19 death toll falling'

The rate of transmission of coronavirus is "much reduced" and the death toll is steadily falling, the Downing Street press conference has heard.

Dominic Raab said the rate of infection – the R value – was between 0.5 and 0.9 and the number of new coronavirus cases and daily death toll were both “steadily falling”.

The Foreign Secretary also announced at Thursday's Downing Street press conference, that the number of people in the UK to have died after contracting the virus rose by 539 to a total of 30,615 on Thursday.

The rate of transmission decreasing to "manageable levels" is one of the Government's five tests that must be met for lockdown restrictions to be eased.

Deputy chief medical officer for England Dr Jenny Harries said on Thursday that the rate of transmission was “much reduced”.

Speaking at the No 10 daily press conference, she said the numbers of hospital patients with Covid-19 were down in all regions to “relatively low” levels, with a 16 per cent fall over the past week.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab
PA

She said the number of deaths was down to the lowest number since the end of March.

But Mr Raab said Covid-19 "was not defeated yet" as he insisted the pandemic was still in a dangerous stage.

He said the Government is “confident” it has the plan to decrease the infection rates in hospitals and care homes.

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“Testing is part of that but also it’s the movement of people in and out of those settings which is fuelling that transmission, so they’re both parts of that problem.

“There’s not a silver bullet here, it’s about putting all the different bits of the jigsaw together and having a strategic, holistic approach.

“We’re confident now we’ve got enough information, we’ve got the data and we’ve got the plan in place to really drive the infection rates in hospitals, but also in care homes.”

Office for National Statistics chief Sir Ian Diamond told the conference that it was right that the infection rate – R – had probably gone up in the past fortnight.

“That is driven by the epidemic in care homes, he would say and I would not demur from that,” he said.

“That gives us a real challenge to reduce the epidemic in care homes and it’s one that I think – over the next few weeks from what I see happening – will happen.”

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He said that “at the moment we need, certainly, to get on top of the epidemic in care homes and in hospitals” but “in the community we have things relatively low at the moment”.

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