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The British government has decided to extend the coronavirus "lockdown" for three weeks, in light of the latest spike in the number of daily deaths. The provisional number of victims of the epidemic amounted to 13,729, after the 861 hospital deaths confirmed this Thursday and with a total of 103,093 positives throughout the country.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, replacing Boris Johnson (who is still recovering at the Checkers' residence), confirmed this Thursday the new extension of the social distance measures decreed on March 23. Raab has held a special meeting by teleconference of the Cobra emergency cabinet, in which the Scottish chief ministers, Nicola Sturgeon, and Northern Ireland, Arlene Foster, also participated, who had already decided on their own to extend the measures .

"Step by step, our action plan is aimed at slowing down the spread of the coronavirus so that fewer people need treatment in hospitals," said Raab. "Relaxing measures right now could spell a resurgence of the virus that could further harm the economy in the long run."

"There is light at the end of the tunnel and we are making progress," said Raab. "But in order to relax the measures, there has to be a sustained and consistent drop in fatalities. We have to have data that the number of those infected has fallen to manageable levels and guarantee that there is room in hospitals and that public health is not see overflowed, "he added.

The measures imposed in the United Kingdom are, in any case, less restrictive than those imposed in Spain. The British can go out once to exercise and it is very common to see children with their parents in the parks , which are still open. The police also have a much more flexible attitude towards the population when it comes to imposing fines or verifying that they go out to make essential purchases.

Pulse on Downing Street

The thorny decision has caused serious internal tensions within the government . In Johnson's absence, Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Cabinet Minister Michael Gove have fought with Interior Secretary Priti Patel and Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, the latter supporters of progressive relaxation. of the measures (in light of the report from the Office of Budgetary Responsibility, which warned that a six-week "deadlock" could translate into a 35% drop in GDP during the second quarter of the year).

It is unknown in advance whether Johnson himself personally intervened to unbalance the balance. Raab had been warning for several days that the scientists' advice was to temporarily continue the measures "so as not to lose the ground gained" in the past three weeks.

Government medical adviser Chris Whitty meanwhile warned that the increase in confirmed deaths in the last 24 hours (100 more than the previous day) is largely due to the delay in reporting and processing hospital deaths during the Easter festivities.

Still, Whitty agreed that the UK is approaching the critical moment of "rounding the curve," after 980 hospital deaths last Friday, the daily record broken in Europe by France alone. This week also raised alarms for deaths in senior centers, not registered by the Government, and which may exceed 4,000 since the epidemic began.

Epidemiologist Neil Ferguson, co-author of the Imperial College study that forced a stir in government policy , has meanwhile raised the alarm for the lack of "a clear exit strategy" in the face of the coronavirus crisis. Ferguson has warned that much of the population gap testing and social measures may remain in place until a vaccine is available.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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