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CHris Hopson, executive director of the NHS Providers organization, said the nation was “still a little way off” from being able to begin loosening restrictions.
The body, which represents the NHS trusts, has written to the prime minister urging him to “resist pressure to loosen restrictions” before it is safe to do so.
It established four “tests” that should guide flexibility: reducing the number of cases, reducing pressure on the NHS, continuing to advance the vaccination program and an effective strategy to control future outbreaks.
Mr. Hopson told the Today show: “I think if you look at where we are compared to those four tests, each one of them tells you that we are still a long way from being able to begin loosening the restrictions.”
He added: “We had 500 Covid patients in hospitals in September and yet 15 weeks later, we had 34,000 patients and we were dangerously close to being overwhelmed. So what that tells you is you need to be very careful before you start loosening the restrictions. prematurely. “
He said he did not want to speculate to what level case numbers should be reduced before the restrictions were lifted, but he cited data from the Office for National Statistics estimating that 695,400 people in England have Covid-19, adding: “I think that there is a pretty clear vision is that that number should be reduced to around 50,000 “.
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