Name: Coronavirus: Rescue flights for stranded Britons - UK Government Briefing ? @BBC News - BBC
Uploaded: 2020-03-31T02:20:36.000Z
Duration: 31 min 2 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

being foreign secretary on the chief scientific adviser.

Welcome to Downing Street for today's Corona virus press briefing.

I'm joined by our chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Valence, on Dr von Doyle, medical director at Public Health, England.

Before Sir Patrick provides an update on the latest data from our Cobra Kurt Corona virus Dashboard, I just want to give you an update on the steps that we as a government have been taken to defeat kind of ours.

Our step by step action plan is aiming to slow the spread of the virus.

So fewer people need hospital treatment at any one time.

At each point, we've been following the scientific and medical advice and we've been very deliberate in our actions, taking the right steps at the right moment.

We're also taking unprecedented action to increase n hs capacity by dramatically expanding the numbers of beds, key staff, lifesaving equipment on the front line so that we give people the care they need when they need it most.

That's why we're instructing people to stay at home so we can protect our n hs and save lives.

I can report that through the government's ongoing monitoring and testing programme.

As of today, 134,946 people have now being tested for the virus.

Of those who have contracted the virus, 1408 have very sadly died.

We express our deepest condolences to the families and friends of those of those who have passed away.

And I think those figures are a powerful reminder to us all of the importance of following the government's guidelines.

We must stay at home to protect our n hs and save lives.

And I'd like to thank all of those involved on the front line in particular all of those in the N hs for their battle against this virus.

The amazing doctors, the amazing nurses, all the support staff working day and night.

The thousands of other key workers from our teachers to supermarket workers toe a fantastic diplomatic network who are all as a team working around the clock to get us through this unprecedented Corona virus challenge.

This is the United national effort in the spirit of selflessness shown by so many is an inspiration.

I now want to turn to what we've been doing to support British people traveling around the world.

Grown a virus hasn't just changes at home.

It is the greatest global challenge in a generation as the country's work to secure their borders and stop the further spread of this deadly virus.

We appreciate that an unprecedented number of UK travelers are trying to get home, and we're not talking a few 100 or even a few thousands.

We're talking about hundreds of thousands of people traveling around the world.

So with that in mind, on the 17th of March, we advise people against all non essential traveled around the world.

And since the 23rd of March, we've advised the orca or UK residents who were currently traveling abroad should return home.

Hundreds of thousands have already done so, but many travelers haven't yet managed to get back home from young Backpackers to retired couples on cruises, and we appreciate the difficult predicament that they find themselves in.

We also recognize exactly the anxiety or families here in the UK who are concerned to get their loved ones home.

It's a worrying time for all of those who've been affected, and I want to assure them that this government, their government is working around the clock to support, advise and to help British travellers get home.

I've spoken to more than 20 foreign ministers around the world in the last week or so to support this effort to keep airports and ports open and to facilitate access to them by British travellers.

Over the weekend, I spoke to foreign ministers from Australia, New Zealand, India and Brazil on Pakistan.

I also spoke to the Ethiopian prime minister and in all of those cases urged them to work with us to come to keep commercial routes flying.

Given the scale and complexity of this challenge, it inevitably requires a team effort.

So the Foreign Office is working with other governments.

There's a particular focus on transit hubs and we're also working with the airlines to keep his many flights running.

We got a lot more to do, but we've already helped hundreds of thousands of Britain's get home.

The first priority is being to keep as many commercial flights running as we can and that's based on just purely the scale and the number of people who want to come home.

And as a result of those efforts on the corporation we receive from the Spanish government, we've enabled NW estimated 150,000 UK nationals to get back from Spain, another commercial routes that have come under pressure.

We worked with a partner, governments and airlines to get back 8500 UK travelers from Morocco, around 5000 UK nationals from Cyprus.

That gives you a sense of the scale of the challenge and the numbers of British travelers abroad Now in circumstances where commercial flights can't operate, we've already chartered flights which proved necessary to return 1400 UK nationals on flights, for example, from from China at the outset of this crisis and were recently from Peru.

We've not faced challenges like this in getting people home from abroad on this scale.

In recent memory, airports are closing down all preventing airlines from operating on a commercial basis.

Local authorities have placed restrictions on movement that prevent people from getting to the airport and the critical transit hubs that we rely on for long haul flights are also shutting down or in some cases, limiting their flights.

Some of these restrictions have been done with very little notice, some with no notice at all, which makes it very difficult to respond.

So international collaboration is absolutely vital.

As I said, it's a team effort, and it involves government working with other governments but also working with the airlines.

So with that in mind, I can today announced a new arrangement between the government and airlines to fly home tens of thousands of stranded British travellers where commercial flights are no longer possible.

Partner airlines include British Airways, Virgin easyJet, Jet to and tighten on.

This list can be expanded under the arrangements that we are putting in place.

We will target flights from a range off priority countries starting this week.

Let me explain a little bit about how this will work.

In practice, where commercial routes remain an option, airlines will be responsible for getting passengers home.

That means offering alternative flights at little to no cost, where routes have been canceled and it means allowing passengers to change tickets, including between carriers.

So for those still in those countries, where commercial options are still available.

The airlines are standing by to help you.

Please book your tickets as soon as possible.

Where commercial flights are no longer running, the government will provide the necessary financial support for special charter flights to bring UK nationals back home.

Once special charter flights have been arranged, we will promote them through the government's travel advice on by the British Embassy or High Commission.

In the relevant country, British travelers who want to seat on those flights will book and pay directly through a dedicated travel management company.

We've designated £75 million to support those flights in the airline's in order to keep the cost down and affordable for those seeking to return to the UK and in arranging these fights are priority will be the most honorable, including the elderly or those with particularly pressing medical needs and also looking in particular countries where we've got large numbers of U K Tour is struggling to get home.

UK travelers, if they haven't already done so, should check the Foreign Office travel advice and that advice is under constant review, and it can help travelers find out more details about how to access the flights.

Under this arrangement, they should also follow the social media of the UK Embassy or High Commission in the country, where they find themselves so they can be directed to accurate real time information from the local authorities.

Any questions that can't be advised answered in that travel advice or by the UK embassies or high commission?

We also have our call center working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Now I know it's been difficult to get through for some travelers just to give you a sense of the sheer volume.

On average, we normally receive 1000 calls a day to that call center.

We have nearly 15,000 the highest on record, so we boosted our resources.

We've redeployed people to assist in the call center on.

Yesterday, the call center answered 99% of calls and helped thousands of British travellers to get the answers that they need.

So for those stranded off the family's nervously waiting news and wanting to see their loved ones return home, we're doing everything we can.

We've improved our advice and boosted the Cole center.

So travelers get better and swifter information.

We've put in place this arrangement with the airlines so that we can reach more British citizens invulnerable circumstances abroad, where commercial flights aren't running.

And we're working intensively around the clock with all of our partner countries and governments around the world to keep it open the airports, the ports on the flights to bring people home.

We've not faced an international challenge quite like this before, but together we're going to rise to it.

And, of course, here at home, we can all support our N HS by continuing to follow the guidance to stay at home, protect our n hs and save lives.

I think I'll now hand over to Patrick Vallance, who will give a presentation on the latest data, and then we'll take some questions after that, thank you very much.

I wanted to share with you some of the information about where we are in this outbreak on some of the measures have been taken on.

The idea, as we've said repeatedly, is to try and break and slow transmission of the virus, and that's through staying at home and keeping distant.

So the first slide shows that actually this has been successful in terms of the behavior changes, and I want to thank everybody for the way in which everyone is adhering to the measures that have been put in place.

This shows the use of transport over time from the end of February through two now, and you can see a dramatic fall off in the use of the London tube down to just a few percent off what it was back in the end of February.

A decrease in bus use, a decrease in national rail onda decrease also in the use of all motor vehicles.

They aren't decreasing the contact which is so important to spread the disease, and we're doing a good job.

The reason that's important is because, of course, it then prevents number of cases should reduce the number of cases.

So this shows the number of new UK cases, and I'll repeat what I've said before.

This is cases that are detected with a positive test, so it's an under estimate of the total number of cases on its those cases which have been tested because they come to hospital.