Coronavirus as it happened: Testing must go ‘further, faster’, says Gove

31 March 2020, 05:39

Stay at home, save lives: the UK is under lockdown
Stay at home, save lives: the UK is under lockdown. Picture: PA
EJ Ward

By EJ Ward

Michael Gove said that while the rate of coronavirus testing in the UK has increased, the UK must go further and faster, as the country's death toll hit 1,801.

He told a No 10 press conference on Tuesday that despite signs the rate of infection is being flattened, "now is absolutely not the time for people to imagine there can be any relaxation or slackening" of lockdown measures.

At the same briefing, medical director of NHS England Professor Stephen Powis said measures to slow the spread of coronavirus have been working but we “must not take our foot off the pedal.”

Meanwhile, a 13-year-old boy with no apparent underlying health conditions has become the youngest person to die in the UK after testing positive for Covid-19.

Elsewhere in the world, the US death toll from Covid-19 climbed past 3,500 on Tuesday, eclipsing China's official count, with the country also having the highest number of confirmed cases at more than 162,000.

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