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the health secretary, matt hancock, says the government's track and trace programme is up and running, and that there is now plenty of capacity for anyone who shows symptoms of coronavirus to get a test. speaking at the daily downing street briefing, he said the system would help keep control of the virus as restrictions are eased. and trace programme is up and running, and that there is now to get a test. speaking at the daily downing street briefing, he said the system would help keep control of the virus as restrictions are eased. good afternoon and welcome to downing street for today's coronavirus breathing. we are going to do things slightly differently today. i am going to go through the charts and ijoined by professorjohn newton from the test and trace programme, and we will then answer questions from the public and from journalists. if there is one message that we have today, it is that it is incredibly important for anybody who has symptoms of coronavirus, a cough, or a fever, or a change in your sense of taste or smell, that you get a test.

it is by people coming forward to get the test, which you can get on the coronavirus section of the nhs website or by dialling 119, it is by getting those tests that we are able to identify those who have got the virus, ensuring you get the best possible treatment and ensuring that we can then trace the virus and that through that, we can control the virus. so that is the most important message and what everybody can do to help to control this virus. if we turn now to the slides, the first slide shows testing capacity and new cases. yesterday, there were 128,437 tests in the uk, meaning there has been a total of 4.48 million tests carried out since the start of this crisis.

now of course, testing capacity stands at a higher level. testing capacity stands at 206,444, and this shows that there is extra capacity for more tests. tests are available right now on the website, if you go to nhs.uk/coronavirus or by dialling 119. i wanted to highlight that because it is so important people come forward for a test and anyone who needs a test can get a test. if we stay at the previous slide, the next chart shows that there are 1570 cases confirmed as of yesterday, and this is the lowest number since the 25th of march. in total, 276,000 cases

have been confirmed, but this number of 1570 shows that we have seen continued downward progress in the number of new confirmed cases. next slide, please. we are getting this virus under control and this is why we can make the cautious, small, positive steps we have been able to make today. if we look at the number of admissions with covid—19 to hospital, 479, that is down from a peak of 3121 on the 2nd of april. and the proportion of people on mechanical ventilators... the number that corresponds to that 9% people is that there are 606 people on mechanical ventilators. again, that is the lowest

since late march. next slide, please. the picture is repeated across the country, where we have seen in almost every case the number of people in hospital with covid—19 is the lowest since late march, and as of yesterday, there were 7541 people in hospital with covid—19. if we can go to the final side, sadly, 39,045 people have died with coronavirus, confirmed with a positive test. that is 111 yesterday, again, the figure is the lowest figure since lockdown began on the 23rd of march. so we can see from these charts the pattern right across—the—board, which is that on the substance, we are making significant progress, but there is still more to be done.

i just want to say a few notes of thanks to our volunteers responders, who in their hundreds of thousands have come forward and stepped up to the plate, thanks to the charities and the charity groups who are working so hard in very difficult times, thanks to colleagues in the nhs and in social care and also to the businesses, the pharmaceutical companies and the diagnostics companies without whom we simply could not have mounted this response, to the pharmacists and dentists, and i'm very pleased that dentistry is going to restart from next week. and especially for their hard work and their understanding, all of the families who stand behind those on the front line. and at the start of pride season, i want to take a moment, when we can't get together as we normally would, to thank all colleagues in the lgbt community who do so much in the nhs and across social care.

i think the data shows that the action plan is working, the data shows that we are winning the battle against coronavirus. today, we are therefore able to make some cautious changes to the lockdown rules, carefully and safely. of course, these are balanced judgments, and we take these decisions very carefully. we must all remember that in the war against this virus, we are all on the same side. we have come so far together, we can take these steps together, but do not step too far. the disease is not done yet. we must not throwaway the progress that has been made, so please take your responsibilities seriously. if you have symptoms, you must get a test. if the nhs asks you to isolate, you must do so. and to everybody, please, stay alert, control virus, and save lives.

we will now go straight to questions. the first question is from a member of the public, nick from london on video. nick? with the coronavirus sending us into a deep recession that is likely to hurt the prospects of many school leavers and young people, what is the government planning to do to address this? thanks, nick, that is a very important question. as well as the health response, we take very seriously the economic response, especially towards those who are starting out in their careers, as you have mentioned, school leavers and young people, but actually, right across—the—boa rd. the amount of economic support we have put into the economy is unprecedented with the furlough scheme one of the most generous in the world, and the direct support for businesses, because ourjudgment is that it is best to keep businesses up and running as much

as is possible. we can't save everyone but keep them up and running as much as possible, therefore, to keep thejobs there for people to go back to as we get through this crisis. but it is also true that the economy is going to have to change. we are going to need a different type of economy as we come out of this end he will be hearing more about that from the chancellor and the prime minister who have been working so hard on getting this right, in the weeks and months to come. it is an incredibly important question. we want to support the economy, we have put that financial support in but we have to make sure the opportunities are there as well. have you anything to add? let's go to jailfrom warrington, who asks... let's go tojill from warrington, who asks... the shielding advice was updated on 29th of may but did not indicate it will say for those who are clinically extremely vulnerable to go outside. what changed on the 30th of may to make it safe?

thank you, jill. we understand just how significant asking people to shield was and still is, because the shielding is still very important. if you think about the impact of having to stay at home for ten weeks so far, and to have to take the extraordinary measures that were put in place to shield the clinically extremely vulnerable, that has been a very major step. and so when the clinical advice said that it was safe to be able to advise those who were shielded to be able to go outside as long as they stay two metres away from others, then i think that is a small step but a very positive step for those who have been shielding. and i know it has been very well received by those who are shielding, and therefore can just start to make that positive change,

just to be able to go outside, staying two metres away from others. so i am glad we were able to make that change. we announced it when it was safe and we were ready to do so. as i think you can see from the charts that we put up, one of the reasons we could make that change is that the rate of incidence of disease is now back down to the levels that it was before we introduced the shielding policy. but of course, the mainstay of the shielding policy, which is not to meet other people, remains in place, and is very important. it is just people can now, we think it is safe for people to go outside in a very cautious and careful way. john? just, secretary of state, as you say, to emphasise the main consideration is the rate of infection in the community at the time.

as you have shown on the slides, all of the indications are that is decreasing, albeit slowly and in fact, other surveillance data, public health england takes a weekly surveillance report from a whole range of other sources which are available on the web, and they also show reductions in the rate of infection, although, i think it is very important to say there are differences in different parts of the country and the rates are kept under review. all of these decisions are kept under review. thank you very much, and thank you for your question, jill. i think it is a very important subject. we now turn to hugh pym from the bbc. thank you very much, secretary of state. you have said that test and trace is vital to stopping the spread of the virus. we have heard reports from some contact tracers that since they started work in england last thursday, they have had very little, if anything to do. what do you think is actually happening with the system? thanks, i will say something

and then i will ask john to add to that. the system is up and running. it is successful. i am very glad to report that those who are asked to isolate by the contact tracers are expressing a willingness to do so and we tracked that very carefully. one of the pieces of good news is that as the rate of incidence of new cases comes down, so of course there are fewer index cases to track, and we have hired, as you know, 25,000 people to work as contact tracers and the level of incidence of disease has come down and so actually, we have more capacity than we need. this is a good thing. the test and trace programme is working well, the data flowing from the testing portal into the contact tracing software, which is all built relatively

new so we are pleased to see that working well. and the contacts are being identified. there are different levels, there is a clinical public health level which looks at more complicated cases, for example, those arising in care homes or in outbreaks of some sort, and then there are cases where people can in fact enter their own contact details on the web—based portal, so that doesn't require the intervention of one of the call handlers, the contact tracers. then there are those who need to be contacted by the contact tracers and there are plenty of cases and contacts being reported and pursued in all three of those areas, so they are all working and working well. but as the secretary of state says, we do have a lot of capacity. we are very grateful for all those people who have come forward to work as contact tracers and at the moment, many of them are not fully occupied, but we wait and see. one of the challenges of this, of course, is to build a system that

can respond to whatever comes in the future and that is a little difficult to predict. we think there will be flare—ups in different part of the country and we will need to be able to divert resources as required, but we wait and see. but at the moment, it is working well. thanks very much. can i ask a follow—up? do you know how many contacts have been made since thursday because with nearly 2,000 new cases each day, you would have thought there would have been quite a lot of work for them to do, even with the fact is you have mentioned? if you think about it, the figures i announced today are that there were only 1570 new cases, which is lower than when we were planning this system. so i think you are on the side of having too many contact cases is the right side. i would rather have too many people trained and ready to go. we have 7,500 clinicians in the system, so for every new case, we have on average six

clinicians able to support them. and also, one of the interesting things is the number of contacts that each index case has is a bit lower than we were expecting, which implies that people are following the social distancing rules and are not coming into contact with large numbers of people. but of course, that also reduces the demand on the contact tracers. thanks very much, the next question from tom clarke at itv. thanks very much, secretary of state. can i follow up on that question? around 9,000 people had tested positive for covid—19 since test and trace was launched last week, how many have been contacted and how many of their contacts have been chased? i don't have those figures, i will askjohn to answer. but the answer is the vast majority. and of course, many of them are able to put the details in on a web—based portal rather than directly

on the phone. the figures are going to be available soon, but as the secretary of state says, the numbers of tests feeding through and contacts being identified are high. so we are very pleased with the level of completeness. so it is operating pretty much as we had hoped. of course, of the numbers of new cases, not all of them need to go into the contact tracing process. so if it is a case in a care home of somebody who has already been part of a known outbreak, or if the case indeed is already known to the public health service, then they don't need to be contact taste. but of those who are being contacts traced, a very high proportion of people are working with us to use the web—based system themselves or to provide us with the information. so we are really very pleased. and we did a trial in the isle of wight where we had some expectations from that. and he said the number

of contacts are less then we had expected, secretary of state, that is less than what the modellers had in their models which they were using to base the effectiveness and they are similar to the numbers we were expecting from the isle of wight. in lockdown, people do not have that many close contacts outside the household. so the system is working well and we will be publishing some figures soon. i know everyone is very keen to see them. thanks very much. can i have a follow—up as well? go ahead. as you said, surveillance of new outbreaks is essential as part of the test and trace system. i thought that was the job of the joint bio—security centre, does that centre exist yet? it has published no report as far as i can see and has no website, can you update us on the joint bio—security centre?

yes, we are getting it stood up and making sure all of the information flows come to it so it is able to analyse them. and to make sure that it gets set up correctly. that, all that work is being done as we speak. but it doesn't exist yet? well, it is being formulated at the moment and pulled together, yes. thanks very much. sam coats. sky. secretary of state, if the r rate goes up or the second day rolling average start to plateau or go up, how likely is it that you would reimpose some of the blanket lockdown measures? because some people think you just won't do that under almost any circumstances. john newton, it is quite clear that you have a lot of data on the contact tracing system that you are choosing not to release today.

can i ask, will we get by the end of this week data on how many, what proportion of people with infections have been contacted by your army of contact tracers? there have been 3,500 people infected in the last two days, what proportion of them have been contacted by your contact tracers? will you reveal how many contacts have been chased for each have been traced for each infected individual, the average, you say you are tracking that but not giving us a figure today, and levels of compliance, how many of those that you phone up agree to isolate? matt hancock says a lot of people have expressed a willingness to do so. will we get each of those transparently released and why can't we have those now? thanks. 0n the point about the blanket measures, the truth is that we are attempting to move the system from these national blanket measures to a more targeted approach and this is why test and trace is such an

important part of that. but we have always said, we have always said that we are prepared to reintroduce measures, whether that is nationally or in response to a localised outbreak, if that is necessary. the steps that we are able to take today, they are cautious steps, they remove some of the most difficult parts of the lockdown, with the goal of course of keeping r below one, as one of the five tests that we wanted to meet. i have also been able to change the basis in law of the lockdown. because for the lockdown until today, the law has been that you can't leave your home except for reasons that are specifically set out and this is very unusual in english law, not the approach we traditionally

have taken for hundreds of years. instead, we have been able to flip the basis of the law back to specifically outlining things that you cannot do, as opposed to saying you can't do anything unless it is specifically provided for and i am very glad we have been able to change the basis of the law and get away from what was essentially the most authoritarian part of the system whilst, of course, having rules and guidance that have made some minor adjustments. i can see today, people are able to do a bit more than they were and we have seen people going back to school. and some of the small changes that we've made. but i would just emphasise that they are cautious, they are small and it is really important that we stick with it and we keep our resolve as a nation, because it is how we behave that

affects the r, not the rules themselves. and on the second question, john. thank you, secretary of state. they are new systems, they are quite complicated. there are a number of different systems that have been stood up to deliver this and in order to calculate the figures you are asking for, you need to draw those data together and integrate them. we know how important these numbers are and how much attention they get, so we are very keen that when we do report them, they are correct and accurate. and it's difficult to do that reliably. so i'm sorry, bear with us, we are still making sure that we get the reliable data. what we don't want to do is produce data and then have to go back and correct it. so we will be producing it. we are monitoring them, but we would like to do a little bit more work on the systems before we publish them. thanks very much. peter walker, from the guardian. hello. to both of you, if i could ask the same question. to follow up on the last question, dominic raab raised the idea that even certain parts of the country, the infection rate goes up, the idea of the lockdown would be localised.

in practice, how would that work? would it be for example to schools closing or would there be stricter rules, or would it be like a chinese style with restrictions on transport? and how would that work? because people can expect, given the very different infection rates in different parts of the country, that could come to pass? yes, taking local action to respond to a localflare—up is an incredibly important part of the toolkit we have available to respond, if we need to. and this can take a range of options. for instance, shutting to new admissions in a hospital a&e if there were an outbreak in that hospital, that is one example. at a local level, the local director of public health has a statutory duty and responsibility and they would work with the regional public health england and nhs teams to make sure that we got the response rate.

the joint bio—security centre role is national, to provide the advice and information that would then be acted on locally. so the way to think of it is the joint bio—security centre has the information. it advises the cmos of the uk, who in turn give advice to ministers and to local public health bodies through p so that architecture is now established. the jbc still formally needs to come into existence, but we are putting in place the data flow to argument the already flow to augment the already significant work public health england do in this space. and the toolkit that is available, the things that we could do, which includes for instance changes

to the hospital is that i mentioned, that toolkit is as broad as the legal toolkit that we have nationally and that is set out in the 1984 public health act for england and wales. and in the relevant scottish and northern irish legislation, augmented by the coronavirus act 2020 that we passed a couple of months ago. john. thank you. just to add that this is outbreak control in different areas, this is likely to be used, this is what we have seen in other countries as well. the coronavirus flares up in certain areas. as the secretary of state described, there are a range of public health measures. it is really a whole system response. each area has, as well as a director of public health working for the local authority, there is a local resilience forum where the other services, fire service and police, contribute and look at measures that might be taken. it is likely the outbreaks will occur in certain areas and therefore, one of the things which will be required is what we call mutual aid.

so where an area has, for example, has to close a certain unit, maybe it is an element of health care or social care, other areas can come in to help them. there are a number of things which need to be done if you have a local flare—up, some public health, some more to do with the system response. this is an extension of normal processes, but with a very different flavour because of the coronavirus. hardly a cloud in the sky today. and in that they're very warm one too. here is the satellite picture from the last few hours. a few puffs affair with a cloud there across our land. parts of the highlands there but on the whole, it is clear and clear blue skies. it will change expected tonight. apart from the very far northwest of scotland there. you can see increasing amounts of cloud, a where the front approaching the westin isles and sun away. 10 degrees will be a typical temperature early on tuesday morning. may be milder. tuesday

eight, franklin and welcome and much of northern ireland come again and have a very warm and sunny one but in scotland we are anticipating a hit in the shower come across northern scotland were the ones will turn into a north and be much fresher but in the south another very warm temperatures into the mid—20s but beyond that, things are expected to cool down significantly.

this is 0utside source on bbc news for viewers in the uk and around the world. i'm babita sharma. as protests over police brutality continue to sweep across america over the death of the unarmed black man, george floyd, the results of an independent autopsy are released. the evidence is consistent with mechanical asphyxia as the cause of death and homicide as the manner of death. his death has sparked some of the worst racial and civil unrest in the us for generations — and show no sign of easing.