The government on March 23 ordered a three-week shutdown of non-essential shops and services to cut close-contact transmission of the virus. But warmer weekend weather has stoked fears that people could congregate in parks and open spaces, potentially threatening any gains made in cutting transmission rates.
A major south London park was closed yesterday after concern about high numbers of sunbathers on Saturday.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who himself tested positive for Covid-19, told Sky News television that sunbathing was “against the rules” and anyone doing so put lives at risk.
He told the BBC most people were following guidance only to leave their homes to shop for essential supplies and medicine, and to exercise once a day.
But he said it was “quite unbelievable” that a minority were not. “The truth is the more people go out from home, the more the virus spreads,” he added.
“I don’t want to have to take away exercise as a reason to leave home because people are not following the rules...If the result of that is that too many people go out and flout the rules I’m afraid we’ll have to take action.”
Hancock later told a daily government briefing changes to social distancing rules were “not imminent”.
Hancock stressed the country still had enough critical care capacity to treat patients with Covid-19 and disclosed the NHS had more than half of the 18,000 ventilators he now forecast would be needed for the peak of the pandemic.
“There are currently over 2,336 spare critical care beds for the NHS in England, and over 9,000 ventilators are now available to NHS coronavirus patients across the country, thanks to the national effort to ramp up capacity,” he said at the daily press briefing.
He added that 300 new ventilators arrived this weekend from China and British manufacturers were working to develop new ones.
The developments came as Britain reported 621 more deaths as of 1600 MT on Saturday, taking the total toll to 4,934.
The toll – down from a record day-on-day high of 708 as of Friday, after a week of steady increases – includes a five-year-old child and seven healthcare workers.
There were 47,806 confirmed hospital cases as of 0800GMT yesterday, up 5,903 on the previous 24 hours.
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