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Video report from Emily Morgan, ITV News Health Editor
Deaths from coronavirus in the United Kingdom they have fallen by 41% in the last week, said the Secretary of Health, after the vAccreditation program progress to hit two fifths of all adults.
Matt Hancock said the dramatic drop in deaths shows that “vaccines work” and that the link between Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths “is now breaking down.”
It comes after data released by the four nations of the United Kingdom showed that the vaccination schedule had passed the milestone of giving more than a million people both doses of a coronavirus injection.
Hancock said that at least 21.3 million people in the UK had received their first dose of a vaccine.
However, the minister faced tough questions in Friday’s briefing on the proposed 1% salary increase for NHS workers and the time it had taken to track the sixth person in the UK to have contracted the Brazilian variant.
The health secretary also pointed out some other promising statistics; that confirmed positive cases had been reduced by 34% in the last week and hospital admissions decreased by 29%.
This shows that “the vaccine is protecting the NHS, saving lives across the country. The country’s plan is working,” Hancock said.
His claim is supported by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), who said UK infection rates are low and haven’t been seen since October.
The ONS found that only one in 220 people in England had coronavirus, in the week ending February 27.
the The health secretary praised Public Health England for locating the missing carrier of the Brazilian variant of the coronavirus, which went unnoticed after failing to complete a test registration form.
But social media users wondered why it took five days to locate the mystery person, as billions have been spent on the Test and Trace system.
Despite trying to focus on finding the lost case, most of the journalists who asked questions wanted to know why the government was proposing a pay increase of just 1% for NHS staff.
He defended the proposed pay increase, saying that NHS staff had been exempted from the general public sector pay freeze.
Mr Hancock told a Downing Street news conference: “I am very happy that the NHS staff have come out of the pay freeze.
“We have affordability issues due to the consequences of the pandemic on public finances that were established in this week’s budget.
“We have to take them into account, but we have been able to get the NHS out of the pay freeze that applies to everyone else in the public sector.”
About the missing person, Hancock said they “stayed home and there is no sign of any further transmission.”
Dr Susan Hopkins, director of strategic response at Public Health England, said a team of 40 people was able to locate the mysterious individual who had tested positive for the Covid-19 variant, first identified in the Brazilian city of Manaus.
She told a Downing Street news conference that the individual had “attempted to register his test online but had not done so effectively.”
“Teams of specialists from NHS Test and Trace and Public Health England immediately launched an investigation to identify the individual in question,” continued Dr. Hopkins.
“A 40-person incident team was mobilized from across the system comprised of labs, logistics and data analytics experts to track the individual.”
The discovery, by reading the test barcode, that the sample had arrived at the Cambridge lighthouse via DHL for home delivery helped narrow it down to two regions consisting of 10,000 potential households.
This was then further narrowed to 379 households with “enhanced contact tracing” and then activated, with call handlers reaching out to those who might have received a test in that time interval, narrowing it down to 27 people earlier. the person to show up.
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