Boris Johnson calls coronavirus 'worst public health crisis for a generation' – as it happened

Here are the main points from the news conference. Boris Johnson was joined by Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser.

• Johnson said that Britain was facing the “worst public health crisis for a generation” and that “many more” people would die. (See 5.52pm.) In a marked change of tone from his previous press conferences and interviews on this subject, he explained that Britons were going to face considerable disruption to ordinary life over the next few months as the government introduced measures to delay and limit the spread of Covid-19.

• Johnson said the true number of coronavirus cases in the population was probably “much higher” than official figures suggest. He said:

The number of cases will rise sharply, indeed the true number of cases is higher - perhaps much higher - than the number of cases we have so far confirmed with tests.

Vallance said he thought the actual number of people infected in the UK at the moment could be between 5,000 and 10,000. The official number of confirmed cases is 596.

• Johnson confirmed that the UK was now moving out of the “contain” phase and into the “delay” phase for dealing with the epidemic. He said:

This is now not just to attempt to contain the disease as far as possible, but to delay its spread and thereby minimise the suffering. If we delay the peak even by a few weeks, then our NHS will be in a stronger state as the weather improves and fewer people suffer from normal respiratory diseases, more beds are available and we’ll have more time for medical research. We can also act to stretch the peak of the disease over a longer period so that our society is better able to cope.

• Johnson said that people with a fever or a new, persistent cough were now being asked to stay at home for seven days. He also said schools were being advised to cancel overseas trips, and the over-70s and the ill were being told to avoid cruises. He said:

From tomorrow, if you have coronavirus symptoms, however mild -- either a new continuous cough or a high temperature -- then you should stay at home for at least 7 days to protect others and help slow the spread of the disease. We advise all those over 70 and those with serious medical conditions against going on cruises and we advise against international school trips.

• He said that at some point in the future the government would go further, and ask all family members to stay at home if someone was ill. He said:

At some point in the next few weeks we are likely to go further and if someone in a household has those symptoms then we will be asking everyone in that household will stay at home.

He also said that at some point in the future the elderly would be asked to stay away from places or people to avoid infection. He did not give details.

• He said at the moment he was not planning to ban sporting events, but he said this was being kept under review. He said:

We are considering the question of banning major public events such as sporting fixtures. And the scientific advice, as we’ve said over the last couple of weeks, is that banning such events will have little effect on the spread but there’s also the issue of the burden that such events can place on public services.

In a mild dig at Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister who is planning to cancel events with crowds of more than 500 people from next week and whose decision to announce the results of the Cobra meeting before Johnson angered some in No 10, Johnson said that Scotland might have a particular issue with the resilience of its emergency services. He implied that that was why the Scots needed a different policy. Vallance said cancelling sporting events could be counterproductive. He explained:

On average, one person infects two or three others.

You therefore have a very low probability of infecting a large number of people in a stadium and a rather higher probability of infecting people very close to you.

And that means that most of the transmission actually tends to take place with friends and colleagues and those in close environments - and not in the big environments.

Though it is true that any cancellation of things can have some effect, if you then get a displacement activity where you end up with everyone congregating somewhere else, you may actually perversely have an increased risk, particularly in an indoor environment.

So it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t at some point make the decision from a resilience point but this is not a major way to tackle this epidemic.

• Johnson defended his decision not to introduce measures as draconian as those being introduced in some other other countries. He said:

The measures that I have discussed today... staying at home if you think you have the symptoms, your whole household staying at home, looking after the elderly - making sure the elderly and vulnerable stay at home - these are the three most powerful defensive lines.

We think it’s very important to maintain public trust and confidence in what we are doing, throughout this challenging time, always to be guided by the best possible scientific advice.

He and his advisers also argued that, if self-isolation measures were introduced too early, they would be ineffective - because people would ignore them at the point where they were most necessary.

• Whitty said he thought the overall mortality rate from Covid-19 was around 1% or less. It was higher for older people, and people in the vulnerable group, and lower for others, he said. But he said he did not want to speculate on who many people might die from the illness because he said the scientists just did not know how many people are infected. He said, although an 80% infection rate was the government’s top reasonable worst case scenario, nowhere in the world was currently coming close to an infection level like that.

• Vallance said that the outbreak in the UK could be about four weeks behind the outbreak in Italy.

• Vallance said the peak of the epidemic in the UK was “something like 10 to 14 weeks away”.

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

The Nigel Farage critique of Boris Johnson (see 6.08pm) is still very much a minority view at Westminster. That could change very quickly, of course, and it was noticeable that the questions posed by the media at the press conference this afternoon were a bit more hostile than at the press conference on Monday, or the one he did on Tuesday last week. But the opposition parties have been broadly supportive of the government’s approach, and some YouGov polling last week (pdf) said more people thought Johnson was handling this well (49%) than badly (32%).

Some of the journalists who watched the press conference were reasonable impressed. Here is some reaction.

From Sky’s Adam Boulton

From the Financial Times’ Jim Pickard

From the Guardian’s former political editor Michael White

From the Sun’s Tom Newton Dunn

This is from Nigel Farage. This Brexit party that he leads is, for the moment, politically irrelevant, but he has made a successful career out of stirring up populist grievances against establishment wisdom, and now he seems to be putting himself at the front of the campaign to denounce Boris Johnson as complacent.

Here is a tweet from the health department with a link to a web page giving the government’s new ‘stay at home’ advice in full for anyone with coronavirus symptoms.

This is what Boris Johnson said at the start of his press conference. In a marked change of tone from the previous press conferences and interviews he has given on this subject, he said that this was the worst public health crisis for a generation and that “many more” people would die. He said:

It’s clear that coronavirus Covid-19 continues and will continue to spread across the world and our country over the next few months.

We’ve done what can be done to contain this disease, and this has bought us valuable time, but it’s now a global pandemic.

The number of cases will rise sharply, indeed the true number of cases is higher - perhaps much higher - than the number of cases we have so far confirmed with tests.

We’ve all got to be clear, this is the worst public health crisis for a generation.

Some people compare it to seasonal flu, alas that is not right.

Due to the lack of immunity this disease is more dangerous.

It is going to spread further and I must level with you, I must level with the British public: many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.

Full summary coming soon.

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Johnson is winding up now.

He ends by repeating the point about how if anyone has a high temperature, or a new and continuous cough, they should stay at home.

That is the way to “squash the sombrero”, he says, referring to the graph illustrating the peak (see below).

And that’s it. I will post a summary and reaction shortly.

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Q: How confident are we in the data?

Johnson says some countries are having some success in greatly reducing the incidence of the disease.

He says there are measures that could be taken of a draconian nature. But that might just lead to the disease surging back, he says.

Whitty says there are some things we are very confident of, like the mortality rate.

But we don’t know how many people get the disease without symptoms.

He says, depending on what the answer to that is, the disease has very different outcomes.

Q: When do you think older people will be asked to stay at home? And how old is old?

Vallance says the peak is probably 10 to 14 weeks away, maybe longer. Even to cover the peak, you would need to ensure that those sorts of measures would be in place for 12 or 13 weeks or so.

Whitty say people may get individual advice from their GP. But national guidance will also be issued at the appropriate time, he says.

Q: What do you mean by people volunteering?

Johnson says he hopes people will think of their neighbours, and consider what they can do to help them. The advice is not to go within two metres of them.

Vallance says the behavioural science says, at times like this, you see an outbreak of altruism.

Q: You said we were four week behind Italy. Might we have to introduce Italian-style measures?

Vallance says the UK may be four weeks behind in terms of the scale of the outbreak. You would expect it to follow a similar trajectory in terms of numbers.. What they are proposing today are measures to deflect that, he says.

Q: Are you planning any register to help people volunteer?

Johnson says Matt Hancock is setting up a system for people who want to come back to the NHS to offer their services.

Q: Some workers will not be covered by our statutory sick pay issue. Could you extend SSP?

Johnson says the government is changing benefits rules. It will do everything necessary to ensure people are not penalised for doing the right thing.

Q: Are you worried about getting it yourself? You have to meet a lot of people in your job. And who would step in if you were incapacitated?

Johnson just says he is washing his hands.

Johnson asks Vallance to address the point about whether stopping flights is effective.

Vallance says, when they looked at this in reduction to China, they thought at best stopping flights would delay the disease by a day or two.

And he says screening at airports sound sensible. But in the US the first case went through screening.

On sports events, he says a single individual on average infects two or three others.

That means there is a very low probability of infecting a large number of people in a studium.

Most infection takes places when people are with friends, not when they are in large groups.

That means, perversely, banning large events could be counter-productive.

He says the way to fight this is to reduce infection across households and across people who are affected.