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Good morning. Sajid Javid, the new health secretary, has been doing the morning interview round and he has given more details of how Covid case numbers are expected to go up after 19 July, when almost all the remaining restrictions for England are due to be relaxed. Yesterday Boris Johnson said cases could reach 50,000 a day within fortnight. Today Javid went further. Here are the main points from his interviews.
By the time we get to the 19th, we would expect case numbers by then to be at least double what they are now, so around 50,000 new cases a day. As we ease and go into the summer, we expect them to rise significantly and they could go as high as 100,000 case numbers.
We want to be very straightforward about this, about what we can expect in terms of case numbers. But what matters more than anything is hospitalisation and death numbers, and that is where the link has been severely weakened.
What we have seen is a severe weakening in the link [between cases and hospitalisations]. The link hasn’t broken and no one is pretending it has; there isn’t enough evidence for that yet. But what we have seen is a very severe weakening.
And just to put a number on that – at the moment we are seeing around 25,000 new cases a day. The last time was saw numbers like that we sadly had deaths of around 500 a day. And now we are at about one thirtieth of that.
We will have a more proportionate system of test, trace and isolate, and it is absolutely right that those that have been double jabbed that we can take a different approach than the one we take today. In terms of what we will be doing exactly, you will have to wait for my statement to parliament later today.
For the foreseeable future I will be carrying a face mask with me, I think that’s a very responsible thing for anyone to do.
As I have said, the pandemic is not over.
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