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Day 4: Key points from Prime Minister's speech

Posted on March 2020 By Jamie Southwell

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Today marks the fourth day of British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson's series of daily speeches in regards to the recent Coronavirus outbreak. On stage with him are the UK’s Chief Medical Adviser, Prof. Chris Whitty, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK’s Chief Scientific Adviser.

Earlier today the Queen issued an official statement to show her support to the general public during this period of disaster, stating "Many of us will need to find new ways of staying in touch with each other and making sure that loved ones are safe. I am certain we are up to that challenge. You can be assured that my family and I stand ready to play our part.” As of now, the advice still follows for washing your hands, avoiding social gatherings, working from home, and self isolating if you begin to show signs of symptoms.

Key points to take away from today's speech are:

  • 'Intensive care respiratory care system set to face major pressure is going to be the first thing the NHS faces' says Chris Whitty, but we could lower the numbers through social distancing, it's a national effort.

  • Possible increase of beds that can take respiratory patients to held load of the NHS weight.

  • UK scientists are "rapidly becoming so much better at understanding" how we should approach the disease and beat it, is how Johnson confidently describes the situation after revealing the first corona patient has been placed into a randomised trial on possible treatment for the disease.

  • Boris Johnson says "We can turn the tide within the next 12 weeks", as the government is planning to increase amount of daily testing to '250,000' with an unknown date of when.

The UK death toll has risen to 137, which is 29 more people since yesterday, but there has been no massive increase in cases. We could see a slowdown of the virus spreading as of tomorrow when the schools are shut down, and the possibility of London going on lock-down within upcoming weeks.

To read a brief summary of last night's points and important measures click here.

Here's the full conference, courtesy of HuffPost UK: