The UK has announced 717 more coronavirus deaths today, taking the total number of victims to 11,329 and marking a drop in the daily total for three days in a row for the first time since the epidemic began.
And 4,342 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, the lowest one-day number for six days, meaning 88,621 people have now been officially confirmed to have the illness.
It comes after Britain yesterday became only the fifth country to pass the grim milestone of 10,000 deaths – the only other countries to declare this have been the US, Italy, Spain and France.
NHS England said its 667 hospital victims announced today were aged between 17 and 101, and 40 of them had no other health problems, the youngest of whom was 37 years old.
The death toll today is a drop on yesterday and the lowest figure since Monday last week, but a pattern has emerged of fatalities falling on Sundays and Mondays and then surging later in the week, so it should not be interpreted as a definite trend.
Government scientists have said they expect the number of deaths being reported each day to keep rising until the peak of the country’s epidemic has passed. Numbers of new cases and hospitalisations will fall before deaths do.
It takes days or even weeks for a fatality to be put on record, so if the country is in the peak of its outbreak now – as was predicted in the lead-up to Easter – death numbers are unlikely to drop significantly for at least another week.
In other coronavirus news:
- Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been confirmed to have tested negative for COVID-19 – he had been proven to be virus-free before being discharged from St Thomas’ Hospital and is now recovering at Chequers, his official home in Buckinghamshire;
- Statistics show one in seven people hospitalised with the coronavirus in the UK will die, and survival odds in intensive care are 50/50;
- China has diagnosed 108 new coronavirus cases today. The number is the country’s highest for more than five weeks and more than 90 per cent of them have been diagnosed in travellers from other nations;
- France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said France must prepare for its lockdown to last ‘well into May’;
- NHS staff may have to start giving people over the age of 65 ‘scores’ based on their health to determine where they sit on the waiting list for intensive care if units become overloaded;
- Former Bank of England governor, Lord Mervyn King, said he was ‘worried’ that only 4,200 companies in the UK have been given crisis loans compared to 725,000 companies in the US;
- Millions of people in Spain have been allowed to return to work as the country eases its lockdown just days after it was at the centre of one of the world’s fastest growing COVID outbreaks.
The number of people being diagnosed with the coronavirus each day appears to be plateauing – after hitting a high of 5,903 on April 5 it has not reached that level again despite more widespread testing
Today marks the first time in a month that the majority of announced deaths have not been in London, with the Midlands counting 170 compared to 158 in the capital.
Outside of those two regions, the North West recorded 102 more victims, the East of England 83, North East & Yorkshire 79, the South East 48 and the South West 27.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said there are ‘optimistic signs’ the coronavirus lockdown is working but that restrictions must continue to prevent the outbreak spiralling out of control.
She said in a briefing earlier today: ‘There are early optimistic signs that the steps we are taking are working but until we know more, until we have solid evidence, we must stick with it.’
Ms Sturgeon’s comments were echoed by a University of Oxford professor who said the fact that the figures represent both a weekend and a bank holiday was cause for caution about pinning high hopes to them.
Professor James Naismith said: ‘Although the number of deaths in hospital announced today is lower than would have been expected were deaths still following an exponential pattern, the bank holiday and the weekend could have exacerbated the known volatility in these numbers.
‘We will have to see further data before making any firm judgement as to trends.
‘There are inevitable and variable delays between deaths and the report of their deaths which also make it very hard to judge the peak number of daily deaths for the UK for the first wave until we have gone past the peak.
‘I expect that hospital admissions will continue to show social distancing is now clearly reducing the number of infections. We should remember that the number of deaths will increase as the deaths in care home and wider community are added. These are harder to measure quickly but are of course just as tragic.
‘We are, I hope, approaching the peak of the first wave of COVID-19 but this is going to be marathon not a sprint.’
The Government is expected to review the progress of the lockdown, which began three weeks ago on March 23, later this week, but there are no signs that it is time to start loosening the strict measures.
There had been fears in the Government that people would start to break the rules more this weekend – a sunny Easter bank holiday – as ‘crisis fatigue’ was expected to set in.
But, in a video recorded after his discharge from hospital yesterday, a recovering Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he had been amazed by how well people had stuck to the social distancing measures.
He admitted the NHS had saved his life and said: ‘It’s hard to find the words to express my debt – but before I come to that I want to thank everyone in the entire UK for the effort and the sacrifice you have made and are making.
‘When the sun is out and the kids are at home; when the whole natural world seems at its loveliest and the outdoors is so inviting, I can only imagine how tough it has been to follow the rules on social distancing
‘I thank you because so many millions and millions of people across this country have been doing the right thing – millions going through the hardship of self-isolation – faithfully, patiently, with thought and care for others as well as for themselves.
‘I want you to know that this Easter Sunday I do believe that your efforts are worth it, and are daily proving their worth.
‘Because although we mourn every day those who are taken from us in such numbers, and though the struggle is by no means over, we are now making progress in this incredible national battle against coronavirus.
‘A fight we never picked against an enemy we still don’t entirely understand. We are making progress in this national battle because the British public formed a human shield around this country’s greatest national asset – our National Health Service.’
Mr Johnson was confirmed to be virus-free before he left St Thomas’ Hospital on Sunday, Downing Street said today, and he will now recover in the Prime Minister’s official country home, Chequers, in Buckinghamshire.
He has travelled there with his pregnant fiancee, Carrie Symonds, who has also recovered from the virus, albeit milder symptoms, and their dog.
Number 10 said the PM spoke to Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who is standing in for him, ‘over the course of the weekend’.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said at lunchtime that Mr Johnson is ‘not immediately returning to work’ and that he will be ‘guided by the advice of his doctors’.
The Cabinet is divided on when the premier should return to work and some senior ministers are already said to be pushing for him to be involved in the decision – expected on Thursday – on whether the UK’s lockdown will be extended.
An extension of the social distancing restrictions is viewed as a formality but the duration is still up for discussion with some adamant it must be Mr Johnson’s decision. However, medical experts have warned the PM must not return to work too soon or he could risk a relapse.
Some MPs have expressed concerns about asking someone who has only just come out of intensive care to make major decisions, insisting he must be ‘firing on all cylinders’ when he does come back.
Only the sickest patients are admitted to intensive care and audits of NHS units have found that survival in the units is no better than 50/50. Mr Johnson himself admitted that at times he felt he ‘could have gone either way’.
Although he never had to be ventilated – a sign of life-threatening illness – Mr Johnson was seriously ill and required round-the-clock care for at least 48 hours during his darkest period.
Statistics show that one in every seven people with COVID-19 in UK hospitals will die of the disease, while the death rate in ICU is more like 52 per cent.
Up until yesterday, Britain had recorded 10,612 deaths from COVID-19 in NHS hospitals out of a total of around 75,774 inpatients – a death rate of 14 per cent.
Reports from intensive care units (ICU) show the death rate for critically ill patients, many of whom need ventilators, is considerably higher at 51.6 per cent.
Thousands of COVID-19 patients in British hospitals end up in intensive care, and the most common life-threatening problem they face is lung failure in which the body cannot draw enough oxygen into the blood.
Patients also suffer shock and heart or kidney failure in up to a third of cases, scientists have found.
Since March 12, when the Government stopped routinely testing people outside of hospitals, some 75,774 hospital patients have tested positive for the coronavirus and 10,602 have died, leading to a death rate of 13.99 per cent.
This is not a true reflection of how deadly the virus is because hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Britons are expected to have caught it and got only a mild illness, recovering at home as if they had the flu.
Experts, including scientists at Imperial College London and Professor Chris Whitty, the Government’s chief medical adviser, expect the true fatality rate to be below one per cent if the real number of infected people is ever counted.
While the vast majority of hospital patients can recover with just support to manage their symptoms or treatment for other infections, some need intensive care.
According to the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre (ICNARC), there was information available for 3,883 COVID-19 ICU admissions up to Thursday, April 9.
Of those patients, 871 had died and 818 had been discharged alive, meaning more than half (51.6 per cent) of the people whose hospital treatment had ended had not survived.
Most of them – 2,194 people – were still in hospital at the time the report was published.
Of people who required ventilators – life-support machines which pump air into the lungs when they stop working by themselves – only around one in three survive their stay in hospital.
Commenting on the high fatality rate for those needing lung support, intensive care medicine at the University of Oxford, Professor Duncan Young, said: ‘The relative ineffectiveness of artificial ventilation might suggest that COVID-19 causes a particularly treatment-resistant form of pneumonitis.
‘It is also possible that in some patients COVID-19 is causing multi-organ failure of which the respiratory failure is the presenting problem but may not always be the cause of death – but there are no data on this yet.’