Boris Johnson declared on Thursday that Britain was “past the peak” of the coronavirus outbreak and was now on a downward slope.
The Tory prime minister used his first appearance at the government’s daily pandemic briefing since leaving hospital to give more details about the five conditions he says must be met before easing the lockdown.
He also announced plans to unveil a “road map” to get the economy moving next week.
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“For the first time,” Johnson said, “we are past the peak of this disease and on the downward slope.”
Next week, he said, the government, will detail a “comprehensive plan … on how we can get the economy moving, how we can get children back to school, and how we can travel to work and make life in the workplace safer.”
There will be five key tests before a decision on easing the lockdown will be made: ensuring that the National Health Service is positioned to cope with demand, evidence of a sustained fall in deaths, a falling infection rate, certainty that the challenges of testing and personal protection equipment have been met and the risk of a second peak mitigated.
Johnson said he is balancing how to “continue to suppress disease and at the same time restart the economy” and compared getting past the peak to traveling through a vast Alpine tunnel.
“We see the sunlight in the pasture ahead of us,” he said. “It is vital we do not now lose control and run into second and bigger mountain.”
The government has been under pressure from media groups and the opposition Labour Party to “have an adult conversation” with the public about how the country will come out of lockdown. Ministers have insisted sharing details too early would confuse its message that people need to “stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives.”
New data released by the government on Thursday showed the death toll from coronavirus in the U.K. rose by 674 in 24 hours, to 26,711 to date. Johnson warned against rushing out of lockdown and risking a second spike.
“It is absolutely vital if we are to bounce back as strongly as I think we can that we don’t have a second bout of this, a second bad spike, because that would do lasting economic damage,” he said. “That is why we have to calibrate our measures so carefully, making sure not only to unlock the economy gradually, but to find ways of continuing to suppress the disease.”
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Of his own fight for survival, he said he had “wonderful carers” and that thousands of others “were less fortunate than [him].”
