welcome you're watching bbc news, the spring of with our main stories. uk prime minister borisjohnson instead of intensive care, back to the ward at thomas hospital. the government says he's in extremely good spirits. uk please step up check the head of the easter weekend is the government says it's too early to lift the lockdown. meanwhile those warnings that the uk economy could shrink by around 14% between now and june. in the united states under 6.6 million workers have filed for unemployment in the past week. one in ten have now been laid off. concerns for the eu as the italian prime minister warrants it could fail unless the leaders better co—ordinate the response to this coronavirus pandemic.

downing street says that boris johnson has been moved out of intensive care where he was being treated for coronavirus. the prime minister is said to be an extremely good spirits and will receive close monitoring as he continues his recovery ain't st. thomas hospital in central london. the foreign secretary confirmed that the measures will stay in place until there is evidence that shows we have moved beyond the peak of the coronavirus outbreak. the lockdown remains. take us the last reviver shows the hospitals have recorded a further 881 deaths across the uk. let's listen to with the foreign secretary had to say specifically about the luck to measures in place. as we look onto the long bake holiday easter weekend, some will start wondering is it time to ease up start wondering is it time to ease up on the rules? so i have to say thank you for your sacrifice, but also we are not done yet. we must keep going. i mayjust explain a

little bit about why that is so important. today i chaired a cobra meeting with senior ministers, officials and representatives from scotland, wales and northern ireland as well as the mayor of london and we can take stock and assess where we can take stock and assess where we are right across the united kingdom. at this stage the government is continuing to gather the effects of this social distancing measures we have put into place. while the early signs suggest that they are having the impact that we need to see it is too early to say that conclusively. we will meet next week to discuss the latest evidence and keep the measure we put in place under review. as we set on many occasions now, it will be guided by the science at all times. we don't expect to be able to say more on this until the end of next week. let me just be clear about this again. the measures will have

to stay in place until we have got the evidence that clearly shows we have moved beyond the peak. i know these restrictions take their toll day in and day out on people's livelihoods and quality of lives, and middle mental health. it's often the little things that hurt the most. with the easter bank holiday coming upi most. with the easter bank holiday coming up i normally spend it with my two boys, seven and five years old their grandparents during easter 999 old their grandparents during easter egg hunt, and under this could be lots of people who would normally be planning a family get together which is getting out in the sunshine with friends and loved ones. just getting out in the sunshine with friends and loved ones. unfortunately right now we just cannot do the sorts of things. and i'm really sorry about that. take another moment to think of the progress we already made, following the guidance, staying at home, denying the virus what it needs to spread more easily and to kill more people. it's been almost

three weeks and we are starting to see the impact of the sacrifices we will mate but the deaths are still rising and we have not yet reached the peak of the virus, so it's still too early to lift the measures that we have put in place. we must stick to the plan at we must continue to be guided by the science. our top priority for immediate priority remains to slow the spread of the virus and to save as many lives as possible. that's why we have to continue to ask you all to keep complying with the guidance and as we have said consistently from the outset it's vital we take the right decisions at the right time, and the most important thing right now is that people continue to follow the government's guidance until we've got the evidence that the virus is firmly under control. that means please do stay at home to protect our nhs and to save lives. after all the efforts that everyone has made

in the sacrifices semi people have made let's not ruin it now. let's not undo the gains we have made, let's not waste the sacrifices so many people have made. we must not give the coronavirus a second chance to kill more people and to hurt our country. i know it's tough going, but this is a team effort and we will only defeat this virus for good if we all stay the course. so please, stay home this bank holiday weekend for everyone's sake. and i will turn to sir patrick to gives an update on the very latest data. over to you. as the first secretary said the measures that everybody has taken, the difficult things we've all had to do are making a difference. in making a big difference. in making a big difference. we know that the social distancing is working and we know that people are doing what they are supposed to do, and we need to keep doing that. the reason we need to

keep doing that is because it stops the transmission of the virus in the community and we know that that is already happening. as a result of stopping the transmission in the community we stop new cases appearing. and this slide, the numbers go up and down a bit. but what you can see is it's not taking off in that sharp uptake. it has not gone sky—high. and if anything there might even be some flattening. that's because of what we are all doing with social distancing. if we had not done that those cases would now be very much higher. if those cases were higher, next slide please. this graph would not look like this, we would find many many more people in hospital we would find the health system potentially overrun, and what you can see on this graph is the increase in

hospital admissions, this graph is the increase in hospitaladmissions, people this graph is the increase in hospital admissions, people in hospital admissions, people in hospital beds with covid, and has gone up hospital beds with covid, and has gone up across hospital beds with covid, and has gone up across the country. but it's not gone up in that steep way and again if anything we are beginning to see the first signs of this leveling off. too early to be sure, too early to know this is on the way down but has not got that fast upswing that it would have had had you all, we all not been doing what we are doing with these difficult measures of social distancing. if the hospital beds were fuller, next slide please, that importantly so with the intensive care units be even fuller. and people are working heroically in intensive care units to look after the very sick patients that are there. but again this is not the sharp upstroke of big increases in numbers, it's a steady increases in numbers, it's a steady increase in numbers which mightjust might be peak getting to flatten off but certainly not accelerating. that

means the nhs can cope, it's not the right numbers of beds with the new expansion in order to cope with this, so we if we are not doing what we're doing it will continue to do what we do in terms of social distancing we put all of this at risk. we jeopardise the thing that's allowed us to get to this position. and if i can have the last slide, please. unfortunately sadly there are deaths from this disease. in this continue to rise and you can see here the increase in rise in the uk and other countries. this will not change for a few weeks, because the deaths come after the other illnesses, the early illness, intensive care and then in some patients unfortunately dying. that will continue to increase for a few weeks, we need to see this begin to go down as well, it should follow the others. the message is clear, which is that social distancing we

are all doing is breaking transmission, stopping the hospital admissions campus beginning to see that flattening off and unbelievably busy but beginning to see that flatten off, preventing more people going from intensive care and it will prevent deaths. think incredible important we continue do what we are doing. thank you, patrick. we will take questions from the media i think hugh penn from the bbc is first up. we have heard some harrowing stories of people dying alone because family cannot be with them for understandable reasons to do with the virus risk and what do you say to the british public about how things will develop from here? the first thing i will say is thank you for all you're doing, notjust the key workers as essential as they are and we applaud them for the incredible work they have done, but also to every individual who has followed the advice and the

guidance, but we have made progress, patrick said that out very clearly, we don't know the conclusively that we don't know the conclusively that we are beyond the point at which we can we are beyond the point at which we ca n start we are beyond the point at which we can start considering the measures to be relaxed, so we must keep it up andi to be relaxed, so we must keep it up and i think the key thing is for people to understand how much of what they have artie done has helped contribute to avoiding an even worse situation in terms of the spread of the virus and number of deaths and how important it is that we don't slow up or take the pressure off at this critical moment before we have come to the peak. recognise the sacrifices so many people have made, a team effort and as a country we need to be united in this mission, we've got to keep it up. if you want to come back with anything further? maybe to patrick, little bit more on the death projections that you have got, i know it's difficult but how long and how fast you expect the deaths to carry on? i would expect

them to continue and keep going up for about two weeks after the intensive care picture improves and so we are not there yet in terms of knowing exactly when that will be but that's the sort of timeframe i would expect. i suspect britain needs a little bit of hope going into this easter weekend. dominic raab, will the government set out in public the principles that will guide you when you do finally come to lifting this lockdown? angela merkel, the german chancellor, said today that the german government would do that next week. can you commit to doing something similar? and to chris whitty, two or three weeks ago you were very concerned about the speed that the coronavirus was ripping through communities. can you say how fast it is now going and being transmitted, and has that transmission rate now come down, or is it still going through britain as fast as it was?

thank you. the positive is that as we have hopefully set out clearly, we can show people that all the sacrifices that they have made and all the forbearance that they've shown has made a real difference. it has save lives and help to protect the nhs, and we are obviously not on the same point along the peak as the germans, so i'm not sure that the direct analysis works, but what we will do is continue to be followed by the evidence in the science, and as we have always said that i have said earlier, we will take the right decisions at the right moment in time. answering directly the question you asked about the speed, at the time i was first talking about this, the doubling time, how fast we were doubling in terms of numbers, particularly in intensive care, was around about three days. this has got steadily longer in time over the last two weeks, thanks to what people have done, and as sir patrick showed in the data, this is

now becoming not quite flat, but the doubling time is now six or more days almost everywhere in the country, and extending in time. that has only happened because of what everybody has done, what we have all done, in terms of staying at home and only going out for work, exercise and critical shopping and medical care. if i canjust add one thing in terms of the principles, and this is not principles except in the narrow sense of health. i think it is important to remember that there are the direct effects of people dying from coronavirus, and this has been affected by people helping to pull the curve down, but there are also indirect effects which have to be taken into account when we are thinking about the health effects over the long term. those include the indirect effects, if the nhs were to be overwhelmed, and because of people's actions, there is still room in intensive care, still room in the emergency services across the country in terms

of other health issues, but we also have to remember the effects on things that have to be delayed to free up our nhs space, and we have to think about the effects of the long—term health effects of some of the economic measures. these are all hell things, and there are other economic things that need to be taken into account by ministers, but for me as a doctor i'm thinking about the health things, all of these need to be taken into account in working out the best way to get to the next stage in this epidemic. if you look in the community at the moment you would expect there to be no doubling time. this is not doubling. in the community you would expect this gnabry shrinking for other reasons i said and that's what's happening in terms of the transitioning community. the time

nicu isa transitioning community. the time nicu is a reflection of what's happening earlier in the efforts made in terms of social distancing. sam, did he want to follow up? in terms of publishing the principles we will rely on, perhaps not next week, because we are in a different place to germany, but will the british government at some point explain to the british people in a document the trade—offs and the evidence about how they are going to go about lifting the lockdown? well, we will make the right decisions at the right moment and be guided by the science. that is all i would say at this point. just remember, the focus, and we don't want to see any distraction from that, as we look forward to the long bank holiday weekend, is just picking up on the evidence that patrick and chris have set out, is not to take our eye of the ball, not to undo all the good work, not to undo the sacrifice of so many people have made. by becoming more lax or failing to follow the guidance at just the moment where

we need to make sure we double down, follow the guidance and get through this, that's the most important thing right now. hannah miller from itv granada. thank you, foreign secretary, today greater manchester police revealed that last weekend they received reports of more than 1000 gatherings. how can they possibly be expected to police that when around a fifth of their staff are not in work? and secondly, i want to talk about furloughing. we have spoken to a blind warehouse worker in rochdale called joe. he is worried about social distancing, or being told to go in or take unpaid leave. the government says it wants employers to take socially responsible decisions. does that sound socially responsible to you? i don't know all the details of the case but he sounds like a vulnerable individual, we provide support to employers and we know they are under pressure and we want all businesses to do the right thing,

we are doing our bit and it's important to all pull together, particularly for the most vulnerable in our communities. i want employers to think long and hard if they have people like that they are employing and who are within their care, in a broader sense. i think it was greater manchester police come on that issue, the police are doing a great job, it is difficult line for them to walk but they are doing a terrificjob, i think. above all, as we go into this long bank holiday weekend, i think people should think long and hard, not just about the guidance and importance of keeping it up, but about what happens on the nhs front line who are doing a heroicjob, if people don't comply with those rules in large numbers. i would urge people to take a moment, before they do anything, however one it is, to think about the sacrifices those on the front line particularly in the nhs, are making. did you want to come back? thanks. just on the furloughing

and guidance around people with disabilities, do you accept the guidance around social distancing for people with disabilities perhaps needs to be looked at in a bit more detail? we can certainly take another look at it, but of course it is the way that it is applied that's important with flexibility, and again, as i said, a sense of the fact we are all in this together and pull through this together. we can always look at the guidance, we want to make sure it is as clear as possible but it is the way it is implemented as well which is important. then kentish from lbc. thank you, foreign secretary. you talked about the sacrifices nhs workers are making and we are hearing more stories about that today, people losing their lives, some cases they are telling us, because they haven't got the right equipment. to thank them for that work, thousands of people around the country tonight will take part in the clap for our carers.

but i wondered if today you could go further and commit to when this crisis is over giving them a real reward, a financial thank you for the sacrifices and the efforts they are making on behalf of us all. and could i ask the chief scientific adviser, matt hancock, the health secretary, mentioned last week that a surveillance study was being carried out with an antibody test that we developed by public health england. could you tell us what the early results of that show in terms of how many people in britain have had the virus and how many would you expect to had have it in the 12—18 months or so until the vaccine is developed? thank you. they are good points. i think the carers and all those on the front line, as i paid tribute to in my earlier remarks, have done an amazing job. we are doing everything we can to provide the equipment, the ppe, that they need, rolling it out at pace. i recognise there have been challenges with the distribution. we have a helpline. but most importantly we are really

rolling that out at pace, we have the military involved where that is appropriate. i will be taking part in the clap for carers this evening. there will be a moment where we look at how we formally recognise all of those on the who have done so much to pull us through this difficult period for our country. on the surveillance tests, the antibody test, the first thing to say is these tests are difficult to get right, so across the world people are trying to get really specific and sensitive tests on this, and a lot of collaboration across the world is happening to do that. the scientists and public health england have worked on this and yes, there is a surveillance study under way. i don't know the results yet, they are not out. this will continue until we have got the right results and they are able to communicate them, and of course, they will communicate them like all good scientific practice as soon as they are ready and they know what they show and they can validate that these are reliable results. that is what is going

on at the moment. in terms of how many people you'd expect to get this before a vaccine or treatment comes along, i think the processes that we have in place are clearly to suppress the number and the idea is to keep that number as low as possible. do you want to come back on any of that, ben? if i may, foreign secretary, you said they would be a time to reward nhs workers. i wondered if you might speculate on a personal level what form you think that might take? i think it's important while they're doing this greatjob and we all trying to focus on us through the peak that we keep our focus and our attention on that. and i would want to give it proper thought will of the other people in government. —— with all of the other people. but we all recognise the massive sacrifice they have made, how much it has done to pull us through even to this level and how much it has done to avoid some of the worst scenarios we could have faced and i'm sure there will be the appropriate level of recognition at the right moment once we are through the worst of it. oliver right from the times. thank you. the question first to the professor first.

we know the death figures you are reporting come from the nhs. but we are expecting figures from the office for national statistics which will be wider than that. do you expect that when you take into account care homes and other settings that we will see a significant rise in the total death rate? just a follow up on then's point with sir patrick, john newton said last week on the antibody study being carried out at porton down that they were days away from having preliminary results. maybe you haven't seen those results but would you anticipate that those results would be made available to the sage committee that will advise the government on the next stage of the lockdown? on the nhs figures versus the ons figures, the reason they are useful to us is we can get them very fast and they are collected in the same way the whole time and they are very comparable to international figures which tend to be collected in the same way. what that allows us to do

is what patrick was doing at the beginning which is to see in relatively near time the trends over time because it is a very stable way of collecting the data. those nhs figures are people who have proven to have had coronavirus, so they are definitely cases in hospital. the ons figures are much wider than that and i would therefore expect them, not just that they go further outside hospital, they also include people who have sadly died where the doctor thinks that coronavirus may be involved even if there is no test involved in that decision. i would expect those numbers to be higher. but because it takes longer for the data to come in and it is always going to be a lag between those two amounts, so the ons data is useful for looking at the wider picture

but the nhs data is more useful for us to make decisions day to day and to make decisions, for example, about what we need to change in terms of our current interventions. hello, west sussex saw a high of 24.4 celsius this afternoon, warmest day of the year so far. cardiff had a high of 23.5 celsius, warmest day for whales but northeast england and scotla nd for whales but northeast england and scotland it has been colder and cloudier with the wind of the north sea in the frontal system generating much more clout. overnight it pushes its way northwards in the front of scotla nd its way northwards in the front of scotland and with lives, not really a metric to much of the brace and the cloud across scotland or the england and ireland and clear skies the further south and west you are across england and wales. temperatures from and not much lower than seven or eight celsius. five or six across scotland a much milder night here. much of the uk again mostly dry and fairly sunny. heavy

showers developing across the far north of england, scotland it in the day across the western side with a rumble of thunder. very warm and much warmer day for northeast england and eastern scotland would be more sunshine and a change in wind direction. on saturday little change for england and wales, were sunshine and as she ran across the western buyers and to turn colder across scotland and ireland and england but so that once continuing across much of england and wales cabbages have to 66 celsius. atla ntic cabbages have to 66 celsius. atlantic system likely to generate showers and easter sunday, this time across england and wales. gripping credit of —— quite a bit of rain.

still a bit of warmth in the sunshine and parts of east anglia and southeast england where we missed the showers. then into easter monday cover this area of high pressure building from the northwest but knows what it does to the isobars. a real squeeze those isobars. a real squeeze those isobars in stronger winds developing on the easter monday, we lose the warmerairwe on the easter monday, we lose the warmer air we have been seeing recently and replace it with something much colder across the uk. epics of rain across the far south of england on easter monday. sonny spells the variable cloud and feeling much colder especially in the winter. bye—bye.

this is outside source on bbc news for viewers in the uk and around the world. we're covering all the latest coronavirus developments here in britain and globally. our mainy story: britain's prime minister borisjohnson leaves intensive ca re as he continues his treatment for coronavirus. officials say he's in "extremely good spirits". in the united states another 6.6 million workers have filed for unemployment in the past week.

one in ten has now been laid