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Britain is well on track to meet its target of increasing the number of coronavirus tests per day to 500,000 by the end of October, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday.
Johnson told a news conference Wednesday night in Downing Street that daily per capita testing capacity already exceeds that of Germany, France and Spain. He added that more than 2,000 beds can be used in seven hospitals in the UK, specially built and equipped to treat coronavirus patients if necessary.
Johnson also said he has enough four-month stock of masks, eye protection, sterile gowns and other essential protective gear for healthcare workers.
In early September, Boris Johnson outlined the government’s goal of increasing daily coronavirus detection capacity to 500,000 by the end of October. The British Prime Minister has also stated on several occasions since then that the government hopes that screening tools showing results in as little as 20 minutes will be available soon, allowing millions of coronavirus tests to be carried out in Britain. every day, helping as many people as possible to return. for a normal lifestyle.
According to data from the UK Department of Health on Wednesday night, 7,108 new infections have been identified by screening in the last 24 hours. It was the second day in a row that the number of newly screened infections surpassed 7,000.
In April, at the time of the spring peak of the coronavirus epidemic in the UK, around 6,500 new infections were tested daily. However, Professor Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser at a press conference at the Prime Minister’s Office in Downing Street, highlighted that the current rise in daily infections also reflects far more screening tests than in spring and almost certainly spring data. Due to poor testing capacity, the actual daily number of new infections at that time was vastly underestimated.
Sir Patrick stated that it was highly likely that at the time of the March to April peak, the number of new coronavirus infections per day in Britain would actually exceed one hundred thousand in some periods, but only a fraction of that could be identified with capacity. test at that time.
During that period, 15 to 20,000 coronavirus tests per day were possible; the current daily testing capacity is close to 300,000. According to Professor Vallance, therefore, it is not possible to compare the situation at that time with the current situation one by one.
To date, 22.2 million coronavirus tests have been performed in the UK; on Wednesday night, 453 of them tested positive. Number of fatalities 42,143.
According to data from Wednesday, 71 people died in the UK the day before from Covid-19 disease caused by a coronavirus infection, the same number as the day before. There were periods in April when more than 1,200 people died daily from the coronavirus epidemic in the UK.
(MTI)
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