THE PEAK of coronavirus has now been reached, according to the UK health secretary.
Speaking in the House of Commons this afternoon Matt Hancock said the country had now reached the peak of the disease, but said there would not be changes to the current lockdown strategy.
He also confirmed that 15 social care staff have died having contracted Covid-19 while working in nursing homes and care settings.
Mr Hancock told MPs that five things had to be achieved "before we relax any social distancing rules or make changes", including ensuring the NHS is able to cope, and continuing to see the daily number of people who de from the virus falling "consistently".
He said: "We are at the peak. But before we relax any social distancing rules, or make changes to that we have set out five tasks that have to be met. First that the NHS can continue to cope; second that the operational challenges have been met; third, that the daily death rate falls sustainably and consistently; fourth that the rate of infection is decreasing, and most importantly fifth, that there is no risk of a second peak."
The minister said that while the government is still working towards its UK-wide goal of carrying out 100,000 tests a day by the end of the month, he admitted that "demand has thus far been lower than expected" although the "expansion of capacity is ahead of plan".
The Government is now expected to increase the categories of workers eligible to be tested in an attempt to meet its goal, as well as increase the number of mobile testing units available and send out at-home testing kits for those unable to reach testing sites.
It has been suggested that supermarket workers could be among those offered testing.
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth demanded that staff be given testing "at a local NHS site or by mobile unit, as it is clearly ludicrous to expect care workers to travel miles to drive-thru test centres."
Former labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also said the government was "nowhere near" the level of testing needed.
Mr Hancock responded: "We were one of the first countries in the world to develop a test, we rapidly increase the number of tests from 2000 at the start of March to 10,000 that's a multiple of five times during March, and now going up further. This is an area where we've had our foot on the gas, all the way through."
Meanwhile the Scottish Conservatives have urged the Scottish Government to take the lead on mobile testing, particularly in remote areas.
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