London: Britain is past the peak of its coronavirus outbreak, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Thursday, as he promised to reveal a “road map" out of national lockdown — but not yet.
Appearing at a news conference for the first time since he fell seriously ill with the virus a month ago, Johnson said “we’re past the peak and we are on the downward slope." The number of hospital admissions and people in intensive care with COVID-19 are now falling, and deaths are increasing less sharply than in early April.
And, crucially, the disease's reproduction rate — the number of people each person with the virus infects — is now below 1. Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance said it was between 0.6 and 0.9 in different parts of the U.K.