UK government will test 36, (a day for Covid – within a fortnight, minister says
The UK the government is aiming to test , a day for Covid – within a for tnight, housing minister Robert Jenrick has said.
Downing Street is facing mounting criticism over a perceived lack of testing compared with other nations, with only , 380 carried out to date. By comparison, Germany is testing 95, a day.
The UK’s Covid – 31 death toll jumped 556 in a single day yesterday, with overall fatalities standing at 1, 949 more than
. , People have tested positive for the virus.
Asked when the country will be up to 36, 12 tests a day, Jenrick told Sky’s Kay Burley: “We’ve said that we hope to be in that position by mid-April. We think within days we’ll be able to go from our present capacity, as I say, of , , to , . So that’s a significant increase but still not as far as we’d like it to be.
“And then mid-April is when we expect to be at 37, . But we now do have enough tests, and this is an important point I was trying to make, to test not just those patients in critical care but to begin to test NHS staff which is obviously absolutely essential. ”
Sky News (@ SkyNews)
Housing Secretary @ RobertJenrick says the UK will be able to test up to , (people per day for (# COVID) by the middle of April. # KayBurley
Read the latest on # coronavirus
here: https://t.co/jsgvwe2oND pic.twitter.com/3UQ4HHHWqn April 1,
Meanwhile, Jenrick also appeared on Good. Morning Britain where he was grilled by Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid:
Good Morning Britain (@ GMB)
‘I hope on testing, which you rightly identify, you will see significant increases this week. ‘
‘We do need to go further and we need to that faster.’
Housing and Communities Secretary
Updated at 8. am BST
The British housebuilding firm Taylor Wimpey has scrapped annual bonuses and announced its board will take a % pay cut.
It comes after the company temporarily closed all of its show homes, sales centers and construction sites due to the coronavirus outbreak.
A planned 2% annual salary increase set to come into force from today for executive directors will be cancelled, the company said. “The objective of these changes is to conserve cash, with a particular focus on protecting the long-term financial security of the business as a whole, for the benefit of all of the company owners,” Taylor Wimpey said in a statement to shareholders this morning.
7 . (am BST :
To recap for those waking up in the UK,
Two of those who have died onboard the Zaandam have been confirmed to have had Covid – , with a further nine people also testing positive, and 367 reporting flu-like symptoms.
The ship, which is carrying more than British nationals and is operated by Holland America cruse line, is embroiled in a bitter dispute over plans to let passengers disembark in the US.
“One of the deceased passengers is from the UK,” a spokesman for Holland America said. “Due to US… laws, we cannot provide any additional medical and health details.”
The Zaandam, and its sister ship the Rotterdam, passed through the Panama Canal on Monday after being denied entry to several ports. Both ships are seeking to dock in Florida later this week.
But Florida’s governor is reluctant to allow disembarkation for the more than 1, 12 people aboard the Zaandam. However, Donald Trump appears set to overrule him.
“They’re dying on the ship,” Trump said. “I’m going to do what’s right. Not only for us, but for humanity. ”
Lockdown measures in Wuhan, center of the coronavirus outbreak in China , may slowly be starting to lift but life is still far from ordinary for the city’s residents.
In one neighborhood, residents and traders are doing business over two-meter plastic walls set up early in the crisis to enforce social distancing.
Today shoppers stood on chairs to peer over at goods on sale on the other side, shouting down to vendors to check on prices, as well as using payment apps on their mobile phones rather than risk grubby cash, to pick up groceries. Reuters reports:
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings