Name: UK gov coronavirus update: Johnson promises to ramp up testing - 25th March
Uploaded: 2020-03-31T07:35:09.000Z
Duration: 28 min 54 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...

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Thank you for joining us for today's daily briefing on Corona virus.

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I'd like to update You'il on the government's plan to defeat the virus on dawn.

The latest developments I'm joined once again by our chief medical officer, Professor Chris Witty, and the chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Balance.

From the very beginning of this crisis, I followed the advice of our world leading scientists to defeat Corona virus by taking the right measures at the right time.

What everybody needs to recognize is that our n hs, like any world class health service, has only limited numbers of doctors, nurses and specialist equipment.

So the more people who become sick at any one time, the harder it is for the N HS to cope.

And so it's vital to delay the spread of the disease on dhe, reduce the number of people needing hospital treatment at any one time.

That's why we've given the clear instruction that people must stay at home unless they have one of the reasons we've set out on DDE.

With your help, we will slow the spread of the disease.

I want to thank everyone who's being following the clear rules that we set out on Monday, and I want to thank everyone in the N hs, the front line of the fight against Corona virus.

And of course, our public service is our teachers and our school staff, the transport workers, police officers, everyone who's keeping this country going.

But I also want to offer a special thank you everyone who has now volunteered to help the N hs.

When we launched the appeal last night, we hoped to get 250,000 volunteers over a few days.

But I can tell you that in just 24 hours, 405,000 people have responded to the call.

They will be driving medicines from pharmacies to patients.

They'll be bringing patients home from hospital.

Very importantly, they'll be making regular phone calls to check on and support people who are staying on their own at home.

And they will be absolutely crucial in the fight against this virus that is already in one day as many volunteers as the population of Coventry and so all of you into allover former N hs staff who are coming back now into the service.

I say thank you on behalf of the entire country.

But finally I want to remind everyone of cool policy, Stay at home, protect the n hs and save lives.

First of all, I think from Laura Kuhns Burg of the BBC.

Yes, Prime Minister, can you honestly say that the government is coping?

People are struggling to make ends meet, and some people are being forced to go to work when they don't feel that they're safe.

If we already had the kinds of numbers of tests that you would like to see, How much of a difference would it have made to your ability to fight the disease off?

First of all, Laura on the on the tests out a huge national program of testing is being rolled out.

But our hand over to Patrick into Chris to say a little bit more about testing and how we're we're going to do it.

But on the the National effort to protect those who whose jobs whose livelihoods threatened.

I think everybody understands the challenge that the whole country now faces, but we have to get through this together, and we are getting through it together with an unprecedented program of support for not just for businesses but for workers of all kinds across the country.

Never in our history has the government put it zones around people in the way that we are doing now to help them get through this difficult time.

And yes, it is absolutely true that the measures to support people in employment are exceptional, and an extraordinary 80% of your salary up to £2500 per month were standing behind.

We're also in the course of the next couple of days you'll be hearing more from Rishi Soon.

Act the Chancellor tomorrow about what we're doing to help the self employed.

And I think people do understand that the complexity of their working arrangements a snow has been harder to come up with the right tailored program for the self employed as well.

But that is coming forward tomorrow on dhe.

Yes, I do think that when you look at the sheer scale of what the government is doing to get this country through.

We will cope, and we are coping very well indeed under the most challenging possible circumstances.

But the most important thing to enable us to get through it well together and to come out well together is I think we can, if I know we can, is that we all follow the instructions that the government has given a stay at home.

Protect the n hs on That's the way to save lives.

But on testing, perhaps Chris, would you like to say something in terms of testing their variety of different things, You use testing for some of which we have tests available for and have done throughout, some of which we do not.

So I'm gonna run through them because they're different answers to depending which you're talking about.

Starting off with the Auntie Jen testing, which is testing the people who currently got a disease.

We initially were using that to help screen people who came from high risk countries when that ceased to be a sensible policy.

We've moved on to testing people in intensive cares and in hospitals, and we have sufficient tests for that.

The system for that is working fine and is being scaled up so that side of testing is in place and is working well.

So if the patient gets us far as a hospital, we're confident on the testing and on the scale up the thing we would like to do next, which would certainly make a difference less to the disease.

But definitely the HSE is being able to test N hs and other critical workers who are self isolating, who currently are not being tested as we do not have sufficient testing.

This is a global problem because basically every country is wanting this new test, which for a disease that wasn't actually being tested for anywhere at 33 months ago.

So there is a global shortage, and that's a bottleneck for us.

But the next priority is to get critical workers back to work or to say to them, you have got this, so we definitely would like that not to fight the disease but support the N hs.

Once we have more testing than we need for that capacity, then we want to go out to test a much wider range of people with mild symptoms, some people already having it as part of our surveillance system.

And then separately, they're all the tests, which we will want tohave, which are not yet absolutely evaluated but are going to be critical once you've got them.

That can tell someone whether they have had the virus.

You can't do that in the first few days after someone had a fever.

But after a few a few weeks, possibly as short as one week on that will allow us to be able to say to N.

Look, you've had this infection, at least for a short time, on possibly for quite a long time.

We think it's like you're protected against this and you can go back to work and be confident you get another coffin fever that is not going to be Corona virus, but that's that's a sort of technology that's quite close but and is being evaluated this week.

But when it's not there on the 1st 1 are.

Bottleneck is largely global shortages, which we are obviously doing our level best to free up because it would make it a lot lot better for us to be able to test healthcare workers are now for sure, testing is crucial.

And yes, we need more of it, a cz, Krista's said on.

The other thing that's gonna be important with the antibody test is to be able to work out how many people have had the disease, a symptomatically, and that's gonna be important to understand what to do next.

People are working very hard to get them in place.

But one thing I'm finding out, I think, is the one thing that's worse than no test is a bad test?

Yes, so Senate telling someone inaccurately other they have had it or not had it could lead to dangerous mistakes being made, So we do not want to go ahead with testing until we're confident off the technology and that that that is so important, that if it means a delay to get there, that delay is worth having.

Because that is as Chris said, if you tell someone it's okay.

If you tell somebody they're immune from it and they're not, that is not a good position to be in.

So we must make sure that we get the quality of this absolutely right on the just.

Patrick on the numbers of people who have the disease a symptomatically.

There was a study I saw quoted from some Oxford academics saying a CZ, many as 50% may have had it asymptomatic your I think a lot of people have seen that, uh, that story.

That's why the antibody test is so important.

So there are estimates that up to 80% or more people in Wuhan weren't detected.

Their estimates that of those who are positive.

So that's a small percentage of the population who tested positive.

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UK gov coronavirus update: Johnson promises to ramp up testing - 25th March

crucial

absolutely

extraordinary

incredibly