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we can take another look at the daily downing street press conference here in the uk, today led by the environment secretary, george eustice. i want to begin by updating you on the latest data relating to the coronavirus outbreak. 2,000,270 2000, 552 tests for coronavirus have now been carried out in the uk. including 89,000 carried out yesterday. 2a8,818 people have tested positive, that's an increase of 2412 cases since yesterday. 10,000 people are currently in hospital with the virus and that's down 17% from the 11,000 last week. sadly for those that have tested positive for coronavirus across all

settings 35,341 have now died. that's an increase of 545 fatalities since yesterday. of course her thoughts are with the families of all of those who have lost their lives to this virus. avoid turn to the work that we're doing to ensure that we are able to harvest this yea r‘s that we are able to harvest this year's farm that we are able to harvest this yea r‘s fa rm harvest that we are able to harvest this year's farm harvest i want to remind people of the details of the next phase of our fight against the coronavirus. firstly on slide one as you can see in order to monitor our progress we are establishing a new covid alert system with five levels, each relating to the level of threat posed by the virus. the alert level will be based primarily on the value

of the number of coronavirus... throughout the period of lockdown we we re throughout the period of lockdown we were at level four. thanks to the ha rd were at level four. thanks to the hard work and sacrifices of the british people in those lockdown we have helped to bring the level down and we are now in a position to begin moving to level three turn out to slide two. we have set up the first of three steps we will take to carefully...

so in step one, as the prime minister announced last week, those who cannot work from home should now speak to their employer about going to work. people can now spend time outdoors and exercise as often as they like. finally, turning to slide number three, having taken the first step in carefully adjusting some of the measures and our advice to people on what to do, our clear advice is to stay alert, control the virus and save lives. and staying alert means staying at home as much as possible and working from home if this is possible. and to limit contact with other people and where contact is made with other people, keeping your distance. washing your hands regularly and also staying at home and self isolating if you or a household member shows symptoms of the virus.

my final point today relates to the availability of labour this year for the farming harvest. every year, large numbers of people come from countries such as romania and bulgaria to take part in the harvest, harvesting crops such as strawberries and salads and vegetables. we estimate only probably about a third of people who would normally, are already here and small numbers might continue to travel but one thing is clear, that this year we will need to rely on british workers to lend a hand to help bring that harvest home. over the last couple of months, we have been working with industry on a plan to support and help people taking second jobs, particularly those who are furloughed, and we have launched a new pick for britain website that allows people to go online, check what job availability there is and to marry upjob opportunities for growers and employers with those people seeking a second job, particularly

those who are furloughed. and we believe that those who are furloughed may be getting to the point that they want to lend a hand and play their part. they may want to get out and are maybe wanting to supplement their income with an additionaljob. and if they do feel that way, i would urge them to visit that website and to look at the opportunities that are there. i will now turn to angela mclean, who will give us further updates on the coronavirus. thank you. if i could have the next slide, please. this slide shows the way people are moving around using their own cars, like goods vehicles or heavy goods vehicles or in public transport in the three graphs at the bottom. the data runs from the 16th of march to the 17th of may and what we see is although there is some increase in the use of private cars and also in light goods vehicles and heavy goods vehicles, that the reduction in the use

of public transport, whether that be national rail, tube and buses in london, or buses elsewhere, held very low and has stayed very low. that is very good news for all of us, because it means that people are continuing to respect the fact that if we can, we must stay at home in order to prevent the transmission of this virus. next slide, please. this next slide, the top air in red, that shows the number of tests done each day and what you can see is that it has been very much higher for the second half of the graph, so the graph runs from the 6th of april to the 19th of may. 0n the 19th of may, there were 89,784 tests, and what that translates into is daily confirmed contest, sorry, daily confirmed cases,

so each day how many people across different settings had a positive test. it's quite difficult to interpret that green graph because it is in the context of lots of different people being allowed to be tested and, indeed, lots of extra testing becoming available. and when i want to know what's happening every day with coronavirus infections, if i could have the next slide, please, i turn to data from hospitals and the estimates of the number of new daily admissions into hospitals each day. so, we have this tending to look at the english data, and that is really the flow of infected people into hospitals and is therefore a much more sensitive way of keeping track of what is happening across the country.

so what you see is a graph that raised sharply from the beginning of march, and it had already risen before then, and peaked on a proper second and that is exactly the date we would expect it to peak given the lockdown that we took on board on the 23rd of march —— peaked on april the 2nd. and the fact it would take about ten days for the number of sudden drop in infections, to the drop of people arriving in hospital with covid—19. and you will see that that has fallen fairly steadily since then. it is not falling quite as fast as it was at the very beginning, and that is a cause of debate, about why is that. a different way of keeping track of how much infection there is in hospital is to look at the numbers of people who are really ill. so the bottom graph there is to do with people who need mechanical ventilation, so those are the people who are really most ill.

and what it shows is, of all the facilities that we have, of all the beds in hospital where there is a mechanical ventilator, how many of them are being used by a patient who is infected with covid—19. and what you see is that that peaks, not surprisingly, a little bit later than the peak in new admissions, because of course, this is now the fact you can only be an admission once, but you can be in a hospital bed for lots of days. so you see that with a later peak and a flatter peak and a slower decline, but nevertheless a sustained decline across all four of our nations. next slide, please. this breaks down the number of people in hospital with covert 19 —— covid—19 across the uk, so we have it for the four nations of england, northern ireland, wales and scotland, but england is then broken up into different regions.

if we look, and you can see there is a fair bit of variability across the different nations and the different regions. what you see is that for some regions the number of people in hospital has fallen rapidly and is still falling quite rapidly. and for others, the number of people in hospital, whilst it is still falling, is not falling as fast as in other places. next slide, please. here we see people who have sadly died from covid—19 with a confirmed, positive test, here across the uk. this is a graph that we are familiar with and we know that the numbers are always very low on saturdays and sundays, and for that reason, because it is very pronounced in the weekly pattern of cases, we look instead at the blue bars and raw numbers, we look at the gold line,

and that is a seven day rolling average, and we use that on purpose because we want to average out the weekend effect. and what you see with that rolling average is that there is a steady decline in the number of confirmed covid—19 deaths here. next slide, please. there are several different ways of counting how many people have died because of this pandemic. here in the uk, these are a couple of different ones. the top graph there runs from the 14th of march up to the 19th of may, and what it compares is 0ns data on weekly deaths with covid—19 confirmed or suspected, so that is the higher, purple line, or weekly deaths with covid—19 confirmed with a positive test. so you can imagine that not everybody who is suspected of dying with covid—19 has actually had

a positive test. that is why the blue line lies underneath the purple line. and then, the bar graph below it, breaks those deaths down into deaths that occurred in hospital, deaths that occurred in care homes, at home, or in other places. and what we see is that every one of those different coloured bars is now falling. deaths in hospital is falling, deaths in care homes is also falling, as our deaths at home and other deaths. so whilst we remain very sad and our hearts go out to the families of all those people, we do look at these falling deaths with some sense of relief that these numbers are consistently falling across sectors now. thank you very much. turning now to the first of our questions from the public, i think we have a video

question from kuljit. i would like to understand what the government is doing in gathering information from other countries that have eased lockdown is, in terms of taking lessons learned from their approach and using those on ourjourney to easing restrictions. thank you very much. that is a good question. we have known from the beginning of this epidemic that we have been roughly two or three weeks behind italy and france. we have seen the trajectory of the epidemic in those countries, seen how they responded. many of the approaches we have taken have obviously been very similar to those countries, and of course, in many other areas that we are considering now,

including potentially having quarantine at the border for arrivals, we are also seeking to learn lessons from the approach taken from some of those other countries. i may ask whether angela has any particular points she wants to add from an epidemiological point of view. i think those points are very good, and it is obviously really important and a very good point that we need to look to our near neighbours and also countries further away to learn what works and how long it takes to see if something is working or not. the two i would draw particular lessons from would—be south korea, where i feel they have made inspiring use of all kinds of different contact tracing in order to control infection, to an extent that they are now down to handfuls of new cases every day. and when they say new cases, they mean people they have found in the community because of the contact tracing efforts. and i think that is an experience that we are aiming to emulate. the other country i would look to is germany, where the importance

of testing has always been so clear, and that is a place from where we have learned that we need to grow our testing facility and have grown it. thank you. the next question we have i think is a written one, from nick from gatwick. his question is: for those of us that work in sectors which we cannot return to — aviation, hospitality, etc, will we see the government increasing the length of payment holidays for both mortgages and loans to ensure we can financially weather this storm, too? nick, the point i would make on this is that the chancellor has announced an unprecedented and comprehensive package to support businesses during this time of crisis, but also employees that are affected, so businesses are able to access the coronavirus business interruption loan,

and there have also been a number of other grants to help small businesses and business rates have been set aside. in the case of employees in those businesses, we've obviously had the furlough scheme, thejob retention scheme. around 8 million people now work for a lowed under that scheme, and the chancellor is thinking carefully about how that can evolve as we go through these various stages, because it is the case, as you point out in your question, that there will be sectors, areas such as hospitality, the restaurant trade, aviation and others, where it is very difficult for business to get back to anything close to normal for some time, and i know the treasury will be thinking very carefully about how the job retention scheme we have can evolve to help support those businesses as they tentatively

try to return to business injuly. i will move on now to some of the questions from journalists, starting with sophie hutchinson from the bbc. good afternoon. you were just saying how inspired you are by south korea and germany, the contact tracing and testing that has been going on there. do you regret the decision the government made in march to abandon that sort of tracing in the community? well, i think the point i would make on the testing and tracing is, we've been expanding, ramping up that testing capacity over the last couple of months. we got it to 100,000 capacity by the end of april. we are continuing to build that. this week, matt hancock has made clear that anybody over the age of five with symptoms can get a test, and it's also the case that we have now recruited over 20,000 people to assist with contact tracing so that we can

help to track down infections and hotspots for this virus as we try to emerge from lockdown. i think it's a case that, early on in this epidemic, clearly, there was a priority to make sure that people showing symptoms who worked in the nhs, because of their close proximity with patients, had those tests, so priority was given to those, but we are now in a position where we are able to offer testing to anybody over the age of five with symptoms,

and that will be quite crucial to developing our track and trace capabilities in the months ahead. angela? i think i would agree that, with the testing we had, the right thing to do was to focus it on people who were really sick in hospital, so we knew who in hospital had covid, so it was the right thing to do at the time. sophie, anything else you would like to... so, you would agree therefore that your strategy has been based on capacity rather than the science? well, it's undoubtedly the case that early on we were wanting to build that capacity, and we have pointed out before that there were countries like germany that naturally had more capacity existing in their economy. we were building it very rapidly from a very early stage, and we have now got to the point, as matt hancock pointed out this week, that we can offer tests to anybody over the age of five with symptoms, and that will be pretty critical in terms

of developing that track and trace capability. next, we havejohn ray from itv. good afternoon. a question to each of you, please. about the return to school, i wonder if you will both accept the deep, profound and very sincere fears of teachers and parents about heading back to school beginning in june. foryou, minister, this question: when so much has quite obviously gone wrong with the government's leadership of this crisis, track and trace, ppe, care homes, you can't really blame teachers for not believing you when it comes to returning to school. and for the scientists, please, frankly, isn't itjust too early to conclude that the science says that it's safe to return to schools? well, john, it won't surprise you to know that i don't share your caricature of the government approach in this. of course, there have been challenges along the way in these extraordinary times we are in on a number of fronts. other countries have experienced similar challenges. the government has grappled with what has been a very difficult situation and made timely decisions and taken action to ensure that we have the capacity that we need to deal with this

epidemic, and so, for instance, we constructed very quickly all of those nightingale hospitals that gave us that additional capacity, should that have been needed, and the steps we took meant we were able to flatten the curve of this virus better than some had expected us to be able to. but on the specific issue of schools, we are working very closely with the teaching unions and with school leaders on our approach to this. we do believe that it's important that initially we get the year 1 and year 6 into a school environment to help prepare them for the move up to secondary school. in the case of the latter, but also to settle in the younger children in the former. and we do believe that other countries like denmark have demonstrated how it is possible in fact to bring schools back into opening, albeit in a socially distanced way, with fewer pupils initially

and staggering the times that year groups arrive and so on, so other countries have demonstrated ways that this can be done. and linking to the question that was raised at the beginning of this question session, i think it's important that we learn from those other countries, and that's exactly what we are trying to do. my final point is, we should bear in mind that throughout all of this crisis, i completely understand that there is apprehension and anxiety of those being asked to return to work, but there are some sectors, like the nhs, police, the food sector, who have continued to work, and in the case of the food industry, they have continued to work and done so successfully by putting in place social distancing measures. we don't underestimate that there are challenges and that there is a job to do to reassure people, but we do believe it is right to embark on this, as other countries have.

angela, do you want to add anything? yes, thank you. scientists have been clear that changes to lockdown as we modelled them need an effective track and trace system to be in place. we are also clear that any change to social distancing measures should be based upon observed levels of incidence in places that those will be changed. not on a fixed state. 0k. john, is there anything else? to the scientists, as i understand it, the track and trace will not be in place fully by the ist ofjune, so does that affect the scientific advice you are giving? will it be safe to reopen schools? to you, minister, you seem to be accepting that the decision to send children back to school is not a scientific one but a political calculation. you know, even if that means there is an aspect of risk for the children.

we are getting a full update on thursday of exactly what will be in place and when, so you seem to be party to knowledge that i am not party to, so... i'm going to wait to see what i get told on thursday about what will be in place by when. and, john, look, it's absolutely the case that as we evolve our policy from lockdown to something more nuanced, with easing being progressively rolled out in several stages over the course of this summer, of course, absolutely, we are following the science on this, and just as other countries like denmark, who have also embarked on a similarjourney, are also following the science, so i don't accept it is putting the science to one side. but it is absolutely the case that all of us are going to have to live alongside this virus for some time to come, and we do need to try to live our lives and identify ways of returning to work as far as possible,

and to put in place though social distancing measures. that is what has happened from day one in supermarkets, as people will have seen. it is what has happened since day one in the nhs, who have obviously been dealing with people affected by the virus, and it's the case that as other walks of life get back to something closer to normality, we do have to identify ways of doing that while observing the social distancing. the next question is andy bell from channel 5. thank you very much. today, the chief executive of care england has told a parliamentary committee that people were discharged when they were symptomatic and hadn't been tested. secretary of state, how was that allowed to happen as a policy? and dame angela, was there any scientific advice given

at the time about doing that? look, we don't accept the caricature that we took an approach that was wrong. very early on in this epidemic, we had protocols in place for care homes. there was guidance as to how they should approach things. as the situation developed, then more stringent policies were introduced by way of policy around discharge, and we got to the point that everybody was tested before discharge. in those early weeks, there will have been some instances where people may have been discharged who were asymptomatic. there may have been some small number of instances where they may have been showing symptoms but would have been isolated, and that was the guidance at the time that was in place. we have strengthened that very much ever since then and we are now testing and a very rigorous discharge policy that is in place,

and that is getting stronger all the time. hello there. it looks like wednesday will be the peak of this warm spell. the warmth will push north into scotla nd the warmth will push north into scotland and northern ireland as well on wednesday. if youth thunder and shower storms —— a few thunderstorms on thursday. as we head to the night, fairly cloudy through northern part of the uk. weather fronts continue to bring out bricks of rain to the northern isles. further south, should be mild. high pressure continues to draw this warm air northwards across the uk, so we will start quite went across this every outcome and most of the day will have a sunny day. those temperatures responding, low 20s in the north, mid to upper 20s for parts of england and wales. 50 some showers and then the terms

break—out across the south on thursday, then it's cooler and windy with some showers on friday —— could see some showers.

this is 0utside source on bbc news for viewers in the uk and around the world. i'm babita sharma. we're covering all the latest coronavirus developments here in britain and globally. countries agree to an ‘independent inquiry‘ into the world health organisation‘s response to the coronavirus pandemic. that‘s as president trump ramps up his attack on the organisation. they have to clean up their act. they have to clean up their act. they have to do a betterjob. they have to be much more fair to other countries including the united states or we will not be involved with them any more. we would do it a

separate way. millions around the world have lost theirjobs —