“p up to become a contact signed up to become a contact tracer. i would also like to thank you. we will be constantly developing and improving as we go, together we can help contain the virus, stop it spreading further, and return to a more normal way of life. now, the professor will take us through the daily statistics. thank you, good afternoon. next slide, please. the first update i am going to give you this afternoon is at one relating to transport use in great britain and you can see on this slide there are six data sets. the top three art for small motor vehicles, individual motor vehicles, ca i’s vehicles, individual motor vehicles, cars and heavy goods vehicles. the data are arrayed from the left of the side, 16th of march to the 25th

of may. what you can see the cars and four light goods vehicles is over that period, after the initial lockdown, a gradual increase over time in transport use. the heavy goods vehicles, the trend is the same but you can see it start from a much higher base line, reflecting the fact that many of the hgv journeys were essential, even at the point of initial lockdown. if you then turn to the lower part of the slide, you will see the data for national rail, transport for london and then for buses other than transport for london and you can see here, essentially very flat curbs indeed, showing that people have stayed away from public transport, are continuing to stay away from public transport and preserve at this for essential workers. next slide, please. on testing, this is a

recap following the delivery by the secretary of state. you can see that, as of the 27th of may, 117,000 tests were delivered in the previous 24 tests were delivered in the previous 2a hours, bringing us to a total of almost 3.8 million. you can see in terms of the trend at the top of the slide, the red graph, you can see that essentially, there is now a very high level of testing that continues in the uk. these are tests conducted and tests shipped and please remember that a very small proportion of individuals may have been tested twice in amongst those data. then, turning to confirmed cases who have tested positive, you can't see that as of the 27th of may, the figure was at 2013, and a total of 267,000 in total. rather more importantly, i would like you to look at the blue trend curve,

which is a seven—day rolling average and continues to show a decline in confirmed cases over time. next slide, please. now, this slide shows the data from hospitals. at the top it is england only, at the bottom it is the four nations. the admissions with covid—19 in england, we are at a figure of 472, which is considerably down on 637 reported on the 18th of may and you can see that continuing decline in hospital admissions reflected on the upper graph. then, in terms of the percentage of icu ventilator beds occupied by covid—19 patients, you can see in all four nations on the lower graph, a very clear and

sustained downward trend and we are 110w sustained downward trend and we are now at 11% of total ventilator capacity occupied by covid—19 patients. next slide, please. i continue with hospital data. now i am showing the total number of people in hospital, not new admissions, with covid—19 across the uk and you can see, you can pick whichever of the regional or country specific curves you like, but what you can see overall as this continued downward trend in the total number of people in hospital with covid—19. we are currently at 8879, which is down from just over 10,000 at the same time last week. final slide, please. 10,000 at the same time last week. finalslide, please. finally, iwill look at the covid—19 deaths

confirmed with a positive test. you understand that there are always some deaths which are due to covid—19 which are not confirmed with a positive test. the latest daily figure is 412. most importantly, again, iwould daily figure is 412. most importantly, again, i would like you to look at the graph and look at the seven day rolling average, the yellow curve, and you can see here that there is a continued and sustained downward curve. thank you, secretary of state. thank you very much indeed. we will now go to questions from the public before taking questions from journalists. just to remind everybody, these questions from the public, just like the questions from journalists, the three of us do not see in advance and we will give the very best a nswer and we will give the very best answer is that we possibly can. the first question by video is from ella. given evidence has shown that

those under the age of 45 are at a significantly lower risk of death from covid—19, can we expect to see the lifting of lockdown restrictions targeted at a particular age groups? thank you very much, that is a great question and i think i will give a very high level response and then ask professor to give a more —— more detail and the science. although those under 45 are at significantly lower risk of serious impact of the disease, the evidence show that we are infact disease, the evidence show that we are in factjust as likely disease, the evidence show that we are in fact just as likely to disease, the evidence show that we are in factjust as likely to get it and to transmit it so although it is safer for us, the impact and to transmit it so although it is saferfor us, the impact of and to transmit it so although it is safer for us, the impact of those of us safer for us, the impact of those of us under 45 on the spread of the disease is just as great, so the

focus, especially of asking those over 70 to take particular care, is it because of the risk to them, rather than because they are more likely to spread the disease than younger people. maybe you can give more detail to that answer. thank you, secretary of state and thank you, secretary of state and thank you for the question. the first thing i would like to say is that whilst it is absolutely true that the death rate due to covid—19 is a very age dependent and very steeply rising, particularly as we go above the age of 60, it is simply not true that all under 40 fives are not at risk. there are some under 40 fives with very high risk conditions he would be extremely vulnerable and at risk of death if they caught covid—19. that is the rather minor point. the major points i think have

already been made by the secretary of state, that the infection rates are not any lower in under 45s, their propensity to transmit the infection is probably greater than those of an older age group, simply based on the number of social contacts and social networking that they have the potential to do in an unrestricted way and that is very important. the whole game about beating covid—19 is, for now, until we get a vaccine, until we get effective antiviral drugs, is to reduce contact between people and particularly reduce contacts between households to a level that is safe and as safe as we can make it consistent with trying to live with this virus. from that perspective, i would have real concerns about the

under 455 being picked out for any special measures, because of their potential propensity as youngsters to have wider social networks and to transmit more to other people. fantastic, thank you. i hope that a nswe i’s fantastic, thank you. i hope that answers your question. i will add one final point which you might hear quite a lot from us over the next few days and weeks which is that for everybody, it will be easier to lift at the national lockdown measures the more that people follow the instructions they are given if they are called by nhs test and trace because that is about targeting people who are at highest risk because we know they have been in contact with someone who has tested positive. we are now going to go to the next question which is from chris. chris asks, although we recognise that we are far from this pandemic being over, has the government been able to start formulating a strategy for future pandemics so that future generations

can be more prepared? the answer is emphatically yes. we are learning all that we can about this disease and about how to handle this pandemic all the way through. in fa ct, pandemic all the way through. in fact, earlier this afternoon, the prime minister has been talking about some of the lessons from sars, about some of the lessons from sars, a previous pandemic that had a very big impact in east asia but less so here, and it is incredibly important that we learn as much as we possibly can about the strategy for future pandemics, exactly, as you say, so that future generations can be as prepared as possible. thanks, chris. we will now turn to questions from journalists. the first is from the bbc. you have described this new test and trace programme as it being oi'i test and trace programme as it being ona test and trace programme as it being on a scale never test and trace programme as it being on a scale never seen test and trace programme as it being on a scale never seen it before, but are you sure you have sufficient

capacity to test the contacts of all of those infected? you referred to there being around 2000 newly infected people in the uk every day, but the office for national to stay that figure at around 9000 for england alone —— the ons? that figure at around 9000 for england alone —— the 0ns?|j that figure at around 9000 for england alone -- the ons? i will give a very short answer and ask dido to give more detail. 2013 people yesterday who tested positive, you're quite right that the office for national statistics testing a survey estimates that there are around 9000, between seven and 9000, we think, people who actually had coronavirus, we need as many of them as possible to come forward for testing to make sure that they can then have their contacts traced through the nhs test and tracing system. we do need to make sure that everybody who has symptoms comes forward so that we can find as many cases as possible

and therefore they can get the benefits of the nhs test and trace system and we can use it with its full capacity to trace and hunt down the virus. on the more detail, dido. we have 25,000 contact trace is ready to start work tomorrow. that is easily enough to trace down the contacts today, when the vast majority of us are in lockdown. what we have seen in the isle of wight, where we have been trialling, actually at the moment, most of us have very few close contacts because we are in lockdown. it may be less than five who have been generally within two metres of us for more than 15 minutes. if anything, i worry that many of my contacts traces will not be busy tomorrow as we start to encourage more people to get a test. we do expect we will scale up the service as lockdown measures are gradually released and we will scale it up both in human

and technology form. one of the things that, when you first are contacted, you will be contacted online and by sms. if you can, you will enter all the details electronically and you will be contacted electronically and you will be co nta cted by electronically and you will be contacted by a person, only if you have not been able to do that. there is actually really very large capacity today and that will only get augmented as we roll out the app. can i come back to you, briefly. go ahead. you have mentioned that testing is critical for this tracing service to work and of course it is, have you therefore ironed out the problems we have heard of doctors whose can still not get tests or people waiting for up toa get tests or people waiting for up to a week, will that have all been sorted by tomorrow? yesterday, the turnaround time of our tests, we returned 84% of all tests in our dragon centres within 24 hours and 95% of all tests within 48 hours. ——

drive in it sent i do not think that is good enough and it will get better and there will be examples of where the turnaround time hasn't been good enough and as you rightly say, the important part of this service is the speed at which we go as individuals from recognising we have symptoms to the point at which the people we have been in close contact with are isolated. all of us have a role to play in a speeding that up. there has been a tremendous progress in the last few weeks in those turnaround times are protesting and i think we are in good shape to start but i think we will continue improving and learning as we get going and this is a very large service that has its first full day of operation tomorrow. there will be some kinks for sure but we are committed to listening and learning to the user and citizen feedback to keep improving.|j and learning to the user and citizen feedback to keep improving. i hope that answers your question, sophie. we will turn it to robert from itv. good afternoon. yesterday, secretary

of state, you raised the prospect of us moving from a national lockdown that we are living through now which is being eased, into a potential for local lockdowns if there are local flare—ups. who will identify whether a tower block or a couple of roads have to be locked down and how will that be communicated? who will e nforce that be communicated? who will enforce it? i will ask dido again to ta ke enforce it? i will ask dido again to take us through the detail of this. of course, making sure we make the localjudgments, whether directors of public health have a critical role to play —— where the directors of health, and we tell it up with the national level intelligence we have, for instance from the testing programme, through the newjoint by security centre and through public health england, this is a critical task. it is something public health england have long experience in doing for all sorts of infectious disease outbreaks that happen in

normal times and it is all a part of the overall nhs test and trace system that baroness harding is putting it together. what we are building isa putting it together. what we are building is a genuine national effort. it is both national in scale in terms of the 25,000 contact trace is working in their homes across the country, but actually, the way we will stamp out the spread of infection is going to be local action. that is why the government granted £300 million last week to local authorities. it is high tier local authorities. it is high tier local authorities. it is high tier local authorities that have a statutory response military for public health, who employ the experts who will be the people who arrive when you start to see a rise in infection in a community, in a school it, or in a hospital or in some part of your town, who will help us work through what to do. it needs to be locally led and nationally supported. supported with

data and supported with scale so you can getan data and supported with scale so you can get an early warning that trouble might be brewing. thank you very much, does that answer your question? i think so. very much, does that answer your question? ithink so. can ijust also follow up with this whole question of where you isolate. this is notjust at question of where you isolate. this is not just at the uncertainty which some people think has been introduced by what dominic cummings did, butjust in general, let's say i have not got symptoms but i get a call that says i have been in contact with someone who does, has tested positive, do i have to isolate at my normal home? am i allowed to isolate somewhere else so that others in my household can get on with their lives? what is the rule? really important point to make is that if you are a contact of somebody who has tested positive, so not somebody who has tested positive for yourself but you have been

contacted for yourself but you have been co nta cted by for yourself but you have been contacted by the nhs test and trace programme and you are instructed to isolate, your household members do not have to isolate. they can carry on under the normal guidelines and that means that you can go home and do your isolation there. thanks very much. the next question is from charlotte. thank you. this morning the communities secretary talked about the idea that the law allows for people to use their good judgment when interpreting how coronavirus guidelines affect them. i was wondering if you could give us a bit ofa i was wondering if you could give us a bit of a sense of what this means ona a bit of a sense of what this means on a practical basis? for example, if one of our listeners gets stopped by the police and the listener believe they are using their good judgment by the police officer disagrees, whose judgment trumps other one? thank you. there are exceptional circumstances that are

written into the guidelines and we set out some of the details of these in advance and some of the examples are there in the guidelines and the police themselves have set out a huge degree of detail to make sure that these rules cannot properly be enforced and policed. from the point of view of the new nhs test and trace programme that we're launching today, in the first instance, this will be voluntary. we think is a very strong instinct from the british people to follow these, so that when the nhs finds you up or contact that when the nhs finds you up or co nta ct you that when the nhs finds you up or contact you and says that you must isolate, then we are confident that people will. of course, we could also mandate that, but in the first instance, we are not going to. we wa nt instance, we are not going to. we want people to feel safe. to tell nhs test and trace as soon as they have symptoms. to feel confident and

safe in telling nhs test and trace who hit they have been with so we can isolate people who might be infectious as fast as possible and i have great faith in the british public that we all want to be able to get our lives back to normal and that we are committed to doing that together. thanks very much. professor va n together. thanks very much. professor van tam. i willjust come backin professor van tam. i willjust come back in here and remind people that with this virus, the natural r is a roundabout three. that means, left unchecked, one case infects three more. so it is going to grow out of control very quickly. the extent to which we can keep control of it very much defends upon the extent to which people across our entire population engaged with and cooperate with nhs test and trace and put simply, the more we do so, the greater room for manoeuvre the

government will have in terms of making life as normal as possible whilst still keeping this virus under control. thanks very much. i hope that answered the question. can i quickly come back. obviously, it is clear there are some great areas here. when there are grey areas, whose authority is it that decides whether something is in line with the law? in those areas where we have made regulations that are mandatory, there is a normal system in process in which the police police those and then the court system is there ultimately to make decisions. however, in nhs test and trace, we are not bringing in a monetary system, at least in the first instance, because we have the faith in the british people they will follow what is needed —— micro mandatory system, because it is the right thing to do for themselves, for their loved ones and families and the right thing to do for

people's whole communities that because it will make it less likely that wider action will be needed locally and because it will make it less likely that there is a local flare—up. the civic duty and to be personal responsibility to follow the instructions of nhs test and trace is a very important part of what we are asking people to do, following the launch of this service from 9am tomorrow when the first people will start to get contact from nhs test and trace and asked to do something we recognise is a big ask, which is to self—isolate for two weeks. thanks very much. next question is if you go from the i. thank you, is the reason the tracing app thank you, is the reason the tracing app has been delayed from its original launch date because of problems with the trial on the isle of wight? and are you confident, both you and baroness harding, are you confident that the test and

trace scheme will continue to work, evenif trace scheme will continue to work, even if the app never works as originally intended? the answer to the first question is no, it is not technical problems, it is that one of the things we learnt about in the isle of wight is that rolling out the system where people are asked to isolate, even if they have no symptoms, it starts better when it comes in in human form from the contact traces and the app is working in the isle of wight and when we have successfully embedded this new principle that i talked about today that baroness harding set out in great detail, this new principle which is, if you are contacted principle which is, if you are co nta cted by principle which is, if you are contacted by the nhs test and trace programme, even if you have no symptoms, then you need to isolate forup to 14 symptoms, then you need to isolate for up to 14 days. once that principle is embedded, then that is the time to bring the app to bear

because it is a compliment to this system. because it is a compliment to this syste m. eve n because it is a compliment to this system. even without it, this system would be successful, but it is a compliment because there are some contacts that you do not know that you might have made. for instance, if you are sitting near somebody on a bus, within two metres of them, you would not know how to get in contact with that person, but through the app system, we will be able to identify those contacts. the app isa able to identify those contacts. the app is a compliment. it is best brought forward once this system is embedded and that is what we plan to do. it is not because of technical glitches. thanks very much. no dean from the huffington post. thank you. new data has revealed that black and asian and minority ethnic people in england, 54% more likely to be fined under coronavirus rules than white people. if dominic cummings was

black, it is statistically more likely he would have been stopped by police while out with his family. what is your message to britain's black communities who worry that fines are not being issued fairly? i also have a question for professor van—tam. we know that public health england view into disproportionate deaths in the ame is a at the end of this month. can you share anything on this? this is an incredibly important issue. it is important that the rules are enforced fairly and equally according to the evidence and i will ask professor van—tam to respond on the question about the research. thank you for the question. clearly i am from an

ethnic minority. i regard this as a very pressing and very important and i have heard from public health england that the report is on schedule and i would believe the report is going to be very comprehensive when it comes out. it is also going to deal inevitably with enormous complexity, something i have talked about before now. how you unpick age, gender, underlying... crowding, deprivation, how you unpick them from the black and minority ethnic signal, that is also in the data. i'm not going to trail this and give you lots of new findings at this point because i think that is the public health england to do in their own time but i will say again, it is pressing. i

believe it to be on schedule. it is going to be comprehensive and it is going to be comprehensive and it is going to be comprehensive and it is going to involve quite a bit of complexity and care with how we interpret it and what we take forwards and how. thanks very much. final question is from dan of leicestershi re final question is from dan of leicestershire life. thank you. you mentioned earlier that schools will start going back from monday, but we know here in leicestershire that 2000 parents are unhappy about sending their kids back to this timetable. despite the best efforts of councils and head teachers here, there is still clearly an issue of public confidence and safe return. what more should be government be doing to help parents what make is a very difficult and imminent decision? i think this is a really important question, dan, and right across leicestershire, i would say to parents across leicestershire, i would say to pa rents of across leicestershire, i would say to parents of children who are in reception year, year one or year

six, which are the three years at primary school which are coming back on monday, i would say that we would not have made this decision unless it was safe. we have considered all of the factors. there is a very low impact of the disease on children and clear measures have been put in place by the department for education and schools to make sure that the schools are safe for children. i would urge parents are to ta ke children. i would urge parents are to take that very seriously. of course, many schools have been open throughout with the children of key workers in them as well and i'm very grateful to all the schools who have stayed open, for instance for nhs staff and social care who have been able to send their children to school. there is one further thing to give people confidence, and alaska baroness harding to come in on this, that is that with nhs test

and trace programme in place, it means we can be more targeted in finding those positive cases and finding those positive cases and finding all of the contacts that they may have infected and passed they may have infected and passed the disease on to and therefore use this more targeted approach to be able to control the virus. as a sector of state said earlier, we are extending the eligibility for tests to the under fives. that is really important for our early years children's and schools and the way nhs test and trace will work as it will provide an early warning system for local communities to spot that there may be a growing number of cases in a school and immediate action can be taken. it is notjust that we will be contacting and identifying and isolating everyone very quickly, we will also be able to spot if an outbreak is starting. i think parents across the country can feel really confident that we have got a system that has their back. thanks very much. thanks very

much for your question, great to have you here in downing street. that concludes our daily coronavirus briefing. see you again soon.