Fri 24 July 2020:
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said there were open questions as to whether lockdown was introduced too late, as COVID-19 was poorly understood in its early stages.
Asked whether lockdown came too late, Johnson said: “When you listen to the scientists, the questions that you’ve just asked are actually very open questions as far as they are concerned.
“This was something that was new, that we didn’t understand in the way that we would have liked in the first few weeks and months, and … the single thing that we didn’t see at the beginning was the extent to which it was being transmitted asymptomatically from person to person,” he told the BBC.
Drop in UK COVID-19 infections has levelled off, statisticians say
The number of people in Britain infected with COVID-19 has stopped falling, and now stands at around one in 2,000 people who are not in hospitals or care homes, the Office for National Statistics said.
“Despite decreases in the level of COVID-19 infection from mid-May to mid-June this has slowed in recent weeks and has now levelled off. As the Government relaxes lockdown measures, we are closely monitoring these results for any changes,” ONS statistician Heather Bovill said.
The data is primarily based on 114,674 swab tests conducted in the six weeks running up to July 19.
