humanity they really really not getting any. more than 30000000 americans unemployed in just 6 weeks the financial impact of the pandemic shows no sign of slowing in the u.s. . hello i'm adrian figure this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up still much better in europe new figures there show the eurozone economies suffering record losses as well. after months of protests a plan to tackle lebanon's financial workers but will it be enough to pull the country out of its economic spiral. father's birthday party has been postponed the

south koreans will have to wait until next month to celebrate. the u.k.'s prime minister boris johnson has held his 1st weekly cabinet meeting since falling ill with the coronavirus he had his top but his does a lot of extra pressure off the new figures put the death toll there to more than $26000.00 it's now the 2nd highest in europe after italy we're waiting for the daily briefing to begin in london within the next few minutes from mr johnson will be making his 1st appearance there since falling seriously ill with cove at 19 and of course his subsequent recovery out a seriously back up will be analyzing what we hear he's with us now in a rainy downing street leave what can we expect from this press briefing today the

1st with boris johnson back at the helm. yeah it is all. in press conference of the prime minister the chief decision maker has been out of the picture for some time and we have been hearing of differences of opinion within the british cabinet when it comes to easing the lockdown in this country of course it's costing the british economy and other economies across in europe billions and billions of dollars every week what we are expecting judging from statements from the previous site any interrupt you there but as you can see the prime minister just. began the press briefing let's listen and we. chief medical officer answer patrick balance our chief scientific advisor and i'm sorry not to be part of this trio for so long i want to thank everybody who's been doing such a good job in my absence and i want to thank the n.h.s.

for so much including getting me back here and i might add for a much happier hospital visit yesterday in a few minutes i'm going to hand over to patrick and. to update you on the epidemic but 1st i'm going to set out today's latest data 901905 tests for corona virus have now been carried out in the u.k. including 81611 tests yesterday 171200 53 people have tested positive that's an increase of 6032 cases since yesterday 15043 people are currently in hospital with corona virus compared 215350 9 people yesterday. and sadly of those tested positive for corona virus across all settings

$26711.00 have now died that's an increase of $674.00 fatalities since yesterday across all settings this figure of course in q includes death and not just in hospitals across this country that for families every day are continuing to lose loved ones before their time we grieve for them and with them but as we grieve we are strengthened in our resolve to defeat this virus to get this whole country back to health back on its feet and we're determined urgently and in particular to overcome those challenges that in the last few weeks have been so knotty and so infuriating i'm not going to minimize the logistical problems we have faced in getting the right

protective gear to the right people at the right time both in the n.h.s. and in care homes all the frustrations that we've experienced in expanding the numbers of tests but what i can tell you is that everyone responsible for tackling these problems whether in government or the the n.h.s. or public health england local authorities we are throwing everything at it heart and soul night and day to get it right and we will get it right we're making huge progress and i would not under rate the work and the achievement of those who are dealing with global shortages in a global pandemic. they are rising to a challenge we have never seen in our lifetimes and the same can be said of the entire people of this country staying in in forced confinement not seeing family

not seeing friends or grandchildren worrying about their jobs and the future and so my message to to everyone again today is your effort and your sacrifice is working and has been proved to work today the number of covert hospital missions is falling the number of patients in i.c.u. is falling we've so far succeeded in the 1st and most important task we set ourselves as a nation to avoid the tragedy that engulfed other parts of the world because at no stage has our n.h.s. been overwhelmed no patient went without a ventilator no patient was deprived of intensive care we have fine of the 7 projected nightingale wards and it's thanks to that massive collective effort to shield the n.h.s.

that we avoided an uncontrollable and catastrophic epidemic where the reasonable worst case scenario was 500000 deaths and so i can confirm today the for the 1st time we are past the peak of this disease we're past the peak and we are on the downward slope and we have so many reasons to be hopeful for the long term view k. is leading international efforts to find a vaccine. today oxford university has announced a partnership with astra zeneca to develop what they believe could soon be a means of inoculating ourselves against this disease but until this day comes and i'm afraid we cannot say exactly when it made may be we're going to beat this disease by our growing resolve and ingenuity so i will

be setting out a comprehensive plan next week to explain how we can get our economy moving. how we get our children back to school back into childcare 2nd and 3rd how we can travel to work and how we can make life in the workplace safer and in short how we can continue to suppress the disease and at the same time restart the economy a huge amount of work has been going on on that plan and of course. as we produce it we are being guided by the science and we will try to build the maximum political consensus as we produce it across all parties and across the u.k.

but there will be fine if key tests that we must satisfy before we can put that plan into action we must be sure that we can continue to protect the n.h.s. and its ability to cope number 2 we must see a sustained fall in deaths free we must be sure that the infection rate is falling for we've got to overcome the operational and logistical challenges on testing and p p e. 5th this is the most important we must all make sure that the measures we take you at risk a 2nd spike that would overwhelm the n.h.s. we've come through the peak or rather we've come under what could have been

a vast peak as a we've been going through some huge our prime turn and we can now see the sunlight on the the pasture ahead of us and so it is vital that we do not now lose control and run slap into a 2nd an even bigger mountain and so to avoid that disaster our 5th and final test is that nothing as i say we do should lift the our or the reproduction rate of that disease back above one and before i hear before i hand over to patrick i'm going to ask for a short explanatory quip about the one and before we come to that let me just emphasize keeping the our done is going to be absolutely vital to

our recovery keeping the reproduction rate of the disease down and we can only do it by our collective discipline and working together. i know we can do it but we did it we should we can do it in phase one of this is if this country came together in a way few of us have seen in our lifetimes to protect the n.h.s. and to save lives and that's why i'm absolutely convinced we can do it in phase 2 as well can we play the video the government has set our 5 tests that must be met before we begin to adjust social distancing measures. why the most important task is the rate of infection we have to make sure this is decreasing. all viruses like normal flu have a rate of infection scientists call this r. r is the average number of people one infected person passes

a virus on. to beat coronavirus we need to keep our as low as we possibly can. imagine 100 people are all in fact ahead if fire is no more than one then those 100 people will infect more than 100 people and in turn they will in fact even more the virus is spreading quickly. if obviously less than one those 100 people will infect fewer than $100.00 people and in turn they will in fact even feel that the rate of infection is leveling down and coming under control. scientists around the world have been tracking the r. of corona virus since the start of the outbreak. in march at its peak are was around 3 which seems to be the natural rate for this virus since then thanks

to you and the social distancing measures you find we've been able to reduce our and it is now below 0 on but we've only just passed the peak of the fire. ever and it's vital are sustained. over the coming weeks and months the government will be monitoring our very carefully. it will be a key factor in how social distancing measures. in the future. i hope that was a clear and useful patrick any update please and you can have a verse line please so as the prime minister has said there are 5 tests that the government has laid down for adjusting the lockdown what i'd like to do is just go through some of the data in terms of the epidemic and so show you where we are next slide please so the car is below one we think it's between point

6 and point 9 across the nation maybe a little lower in some places a little higher in others but it's below one across the country this shows the number of new cases but as i've said before this only really shows in the blue the cases in hospital and then in the orange the cases have been tested outside so it's not the total number of cases we know that the total number of cases is on its way down you can see in the blue bars here that the number of hospital you can see is coming down and of course the orange bars represent others who've been tested including essential workers but the number of infections will be coming down next slide please this turns into a reduction in hospital admissions for covidien this is the n.h.s. status of this is england only data but what you can see here in the blue is in patients newly diagnosed with coded and in the orange is new in patients with confirmed covert at the time of admissions so these are new admissions into hospital and you can see very clearly from the 20th of march there was

a rise up to a peak somewhere at the beginning of april and now it's come down so the number of cases is coming down hospital admissions coming down next slide please. and that of course translates into the number of people in hospital with cove aid and this shows the data across across. the nations and in different regions you can see very clearly the decrease in the number of people in hospital in london you can see a slightly flatter situation in some other places we need to make sure and to stick with what we're doing in order to get the aunt down further to continue to keep it down and to make sure that the number of people in hospital comes down right the way across the nation but you can see the trend here to decrease that in turn based the question of how do you get the critical care beds down and again when you look right the way across england northern ireland wales and scotland the number of

patients in critical care and those on ventilators is coming down right the way across it's coming down slowly as you would expect but it's on its way down next line please and that in turn starts to lead to the decrease in deaths and here you can see the number of deaths in all settings so this isn't just hospital this is across all settings and you can see it's gradually beginning to come down it's not coming down as fast as it went up and i've said before i expect there to be a bit of a plateau stage here before things really come down further but you can see it's on its way down fine a slide please and again this is the comparison it's difficult to actually look at exactly what this means because people record things differently but the messages are is down. the number of new cases is down that's turning into fewer admissions fewer people in hospital fewer people in intensive care and the beginning to see

that decrease in deaths thank you. thanks very much patrick we're going to go 1st to members of the public who've got some questions to ask or something i'd like to hear from michelle in coom we are getting higher state of the cahokia contin words well we're going in person will come your way from the cities and the tourist hot spots which could bring a 2nd light to areas such as cold war plays can we are asking how tourism within the u.k. will be managed in a cone weeks. well thanks michel and 1st of all i want to obviously i i say i sympathize very much with everybody in the tourism industry who's taken such a such a hit and it's been one of our jobs to make sure that we look after businesses far as we possibly can through our loans our support schemes to our furthering schemes for for workers you will come back michel we are going to make sure that the u.k.

bounces back as strongly as fast as we possibly can but we've got to be sensible i think the public have been very sensible so far and in staying away is as far as they are in a bang the advice is vital as i say that that does not fray and we don't see people starting to disregard what we're saying but we will be saying as i say as i say a lot more next week and in the coming weeks about how and when we propose to unlock the various parts of the u.k. economy what you're going to get next week is really a a roadmap a menu of options the dates and times of each individual measure will be very much driven by where we are in the epidemic what the data is is really saying and we're getting a lot more data every day now in the course of the next in the next few days so

michel the the short answer is you're dead right we've got to get your business going again we've got to get tourism going again but we can't allow such a big influx of tourists as to create a 2nd spike the 2nd wave of the of the disease press or patrick is going to you will add to that ok i hope that's ok michelle thank you very much for your question katie from liverpool. katie os the lockdown has seen an increase in suicide and what help is available for people experiencing a mental health crisis and. clearly this is a major issue that we've been thinking about people can find at home can become more prone to existing mental health conditions and so that's why it's

very important understand taking the pressure off the n.h.s. in the way that we have means that we cannot as a matter of i think on on monday we cannot make sure the n.h.s. is once again prioritizing other urgent care needs across the community including people's mental health needs and public health england is doing a a huge campaign to reach out to people who have mental health needs who who are feeling in need of comfort in what is a very very difficult time if you if you if you're experiencing yourself. at home then there are there are lines that you can call go on our website got to talk about u.k. to see what you need and we are putting money now into a mental health care charities across the country to support what we agreed i agree

very strongly with katie paul is an issue that needs to be addressed and goes to show why it's all the more urgent for us now to begin. to come out of lockdown but to continue to suppress the disease. i've been let on to more or less absolutely doing the thing i'd add to that is if you go on to the n.h.s. website. contact details both for n.h.s. . things that are available for people who have mental health issues or are feeling feeling lonely or indeed in this case suicidal there are also many remarkable voluntary organizations. that are well known like this martin's but there are others as well and i would strongly encourage anybody who is feeling that they having they're going into a mental health crisis or feeling suicidal or very very low mood please do look up those numbers and go to one that's relevant to your particular needs and

cause someone because there are a lot of people out there who would be very keen to hoping that absolute right now goes really for anybody who is stressed out by the current situation people who you know whether the atmosphere at home has those gone wrong people who are feeling risk of domestic abuse and in particular there are helplines for you it's absolutely vital that people should should use them and as i say one of the reasons why we don't want is there are there are good practical health reasons why we don't want to protect this lockdown any longer than it needs to be protracted ok let's go to the media can we go to lure of from the b.b.c. i very much prime minister that there's been such huge suffering being 26000 deaths since you lost it at that lectern has been huge suffering people's health but also to the country as well as many people are very very worried about making ends meet

by continuing and are you telling the public that the economy just has to wait and if i could ask or professor whittle you said they are is now between point $6.09 what level does the on need to be at before you would be comfortable with starting to ease the restrictions. well thanks very much laura and of you what you say is of course totally right and we if we remove every every life lost and we mourn for the economic damage as well that the country is sustaining for people's. the dreams of peoples that they're seeing shattered in their in their businesses their anxieties about their their jobs we totally understand that as you know government made a huge effort to look after workers to protect them with after living scheme colossal sums in loans are going out of the door we're doing everything we can and i think i really paid tribute to richie soon at the the chancellor for the speed

with which he's come forward with the schemes that that he has i do think that the u.k. has done very well by comparison with with a lot of places around the world but it's absolute vital nor the if we were to a bunch back as strongly as i think we can that we don't have a 2nd bite of this recession bad spike because that would really do the economic damage and that's why we've got and lasting economic damage and that's why we've got to calibrate our measures so carefully and make sure that we. not only unlock the economy gradually but also find ways of continuing to suppress the that is a disease and possibly a new ways more ingenious ways of suppressing the disease as well and that's what we're working on now and you'll be seeing a lot more of that i hope next week. chris and patrick so.

there isn't a perfect answer to what should the r.b.a. except we are absolutely confident that the wrong answer is anything over one because the centers are goes above one then you. restart exponential growth it may be slow if it's just about one it may be a lot faster if it goes a lot above one but exponential growth restarts and sooner or later and the higher it is the sooner it is the n.h.s. will go back to the risk of being overwhelmed and the numbers of cases will take out up it is also important from a health point of view to emphasize to one other thing which is the i've talked before of the fact the fact you have the direct stream drain of our us but also in direct deaths. part of which is caused by the n.h.s. and public health services not being able to do what they normally can to look after people with other conditions and it is therefore important that whatever

point where at that the n.h.s. not only has the are below $10.00 at or below one at all times preferably significantly below in an ideal world but but certainly below but also that it has headroom which allows it to operate not just in doing the emergency things which it has managed to maintain throughout the entire coronavirus 1st phase but also to do the other important. things like urgent cancer care elective surgery and all the other things like screening in public health preventive terms which we need to do to keep people healthy so this is those 2 things from my point from my perspective as someone who's responsible 'd for talking about health and thinking about health as chief medical officer absolutely those 2 to me seem critical i completely agree with that and i think it's worth just thinking at the beginning of this we talked about the doubling time the epidemic we're now talking because the

r.'s blow one of the hard thing time the epidemic and we want to keep it going down so it has to be below one and then we need to get the numbers down to a level which is manageable and gives us some headroom in order to be able to make changes. thanks very much laura can we go to. a good afternoon gentleman and good to have a prime minister and you made the important point the we've avoided the reasonable worst case of 500000 deaths by i.r. own chart the death toll in the u.k. is possibly the worst in europe certainly among the worst in europe as we have head into the 2nd phase of lessons have you learned from that seemingly worrying outcome and secondly. because of the unprecedented help you are giving to study individuals and struggling businesses the national debt is rising

by hundreds of billions of pounds a record amount in peace time a promise to how great a risk is when we are through this crisis you will feel compelled to cut public services and move us back into a new era of austerity ok well the 1st of all. robert only. the u.k. international comparison i think is very very important that people should understand that the collating of of data internationally is is you know bedeviled with with with difficulties and comparisons are very very difficult and actually i think that the the only real. test any real can compare to is going to the complete comparison is going to be possible at the end of the of the epidemic when you look at total excess deaths north of crystal patrick to say

a bit about that and so the i genuinely think when i look back at what the u.k. has done i think that and by the way when we put in the lockdown it was earlier in the curve of our epidemic that it was relatively speaking in in france italy and spain you know i think we did the right measures at the the right time and don't forget that you know people talk about the difficulties of lockdown in some very good questions about mental health. suicides it's a very very demanding thing to ask a population to do very tough and so i think it was completely right to make our period of lockdown a coincide as far as we possibly could with the peak. press briefing for a strong stand at the helm of the u.k. stelly coronavirus press briefing for the 1st time since returning from his own

brush with covert 19 the u.k.'s past the peak he said and is on the downward slope he's going to set up a comprehensive plan next week to set out how the u.k. can ease lockdown measures after announcing that the last 24 hours are failing a further $674.00 further deaths bringing the total number of deaths in the u.k. now from covered 19. conditions to 26711 let's briefly get some analysis from observers neve baca who's outside. downing street what do you make of what. will in short is the most optimistic announcement so far the a british government to have made and it seems only fitting that the british prime minister make that announcement that the country has passed the peak. boris johnson described it as being actually skirting underneath the peak as if they were in as

if the country apos through an alpine tunnel he said in very job so union type language still he said the country still needed to show a consumer to discipline when it comes to avoiding a 2nd will possibly 3rd peak in the near future and that means the country needs to pass 5 tests those tests include making sure that there is a continued fulling infection rate affording at death toll and so far we haven't seen that enough for the government to quiver didn't they say that they can start easing restrictions or at least give a clear cut timetable as to when britain's economy may start to be able to recover what we've heard repeatedly is the use of this our scale that's being seen as very much as a bellwether of whether or not the economy and things restrictions can be lifted here the rate is the rate in which the. the virus reproduces within a population that is now below wall in

a significant milestone given that that was around 3 in march but it is according to the british government a cautious cautious measurement of how things should go or they could in the near future no sign of restrictions easing in the short term that message will come and be clarified later next week. i just need baca reporting live from that downing street that that press briefing obviously still going on we will say listening here at 0 will of course bring you any further newsworthy details that emerge from that press briefing but in the past. the u.k.'s private a supposed johnson has said that the country has now passed the peak of the coronavirus pandemic and is that all the downward slips the news continues here on al-jazeera off to football rebel force next.

because i'm going to. play this i'm doing. a month on the concept you can keep. that you don't. miss this. there is a substitute. in washington but if the 1st. body diplomatic. is on.