Coronavirus hospital admissions in England peaked on April 2, government advisor says
The number of hospital admissions in England peaked on April 2, according to one of the government’s scientific advisors.
Professor Dame Angela McLean, the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser, revealed that the number of new people entering hospital has been declining since early April at the Downing Street press briefing on Tuesday.
“What you see is a graph that rose sharply from the beginning of March and peaked on April 2,” Dame Angela said.
“And that’s exactly the date we would have expected it to peak given the lockdown we all took on board on the 23rd of March, and the fact it would take about 10 days for the lockdown to take effect and that sudden drop in the number of new infections to turn into the sudden drop you see there.
“What you see is that has fallen fairly steadily since then,” Dame Angela added.
“It’s not falling quite as fast as it was at the very beginning, and that is a cause of debate about why that is.”
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Dame Angela also said there had been a “steady decline” in the number of daily fatality figures for over a month.
According to figures collected by the government, the number of deaths are falling consistently across all sectors - a trend Dame Angela described as a "cause for relief".
Elsewhere in the briefing environment secretary George Eustice said 89,784 tests were carried out yesterday - below the government’s target of 100,000 daily tests.
He also said an additional 545 people have died in the UK after testing positive for Covid-19, bringing the total to 35,341.
Mr Eustice admitted some people were needing to be tested for coronavirus twice to deliver a correct result.
The confirmation came following a media question, citing that some people in Portsmouth had waited two weeks after being tested only to be told the result was inconclusive.
"We do recognise that there have been a few reports of people not getting the results of their test as quickly as they would expect," said Mr Eustice.
"It is also the case that there are instances where a test result comes back inconclusive and sometimes second tests have to take place."
Dame Angela added that the UK's testing system was "getting better".
She added that other countries had proven that it "clearly is possible to set up testing systems with a 48-hour turnaround".
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