The head of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service in England says the country’s “efforts have become to pay off” after the UK reported its lowest daily death toll from the novel coronavirus since March.
The UK reported 413 deaths on Sunday.
“The number of deaths in hospitals is now starting to decline,” Stephen Powis, the national medical director for Britain’s National Health Service said of the numbers at a daily briefing on Sunday. “This is absolutely because we as the British Public have paid attention to the social distancing guidance that we’ve been given.”
But while the numbers are positive, Powis refused to say the UK had overcome the peak of the outbreak and cautioned measures will “only continue to pay off if we continue to keep social distancing and continue to comply.”
“My fear, as the fear of all of us, is that those curves won’t continue to be on a downward trend, but will start to go on an upward trend,” Powis also said. “We want to avoid a second peak, we want to avoid a rise, so I can’t emphasize enough that this is not the time to say: ‘actually, we’ve done a good job, we need to stop complying with our social distancing instructions and the government guidance.’ This is exactly the time to keep that up.”
