Monday, 14 Jul 2025

Coronavirus is about to ‘accelerate rapidly’ as London warned its two weeks ahead

Boris Johnson has urged Britons to stay home if they are around anyone with symptoms of coronavirus. The Prime Minister said “now is the time for everyone to stop “non-essential contact” and to stop “all non-essential travel”. Dr Chris Whitty Chief Medical Officer for England went on to warn cases of COVID-19 are about to “accelerate rapidly”.

Dr Whitty said: “To make an obvious point this is now a very global disease.

“In this country this disease is now accelerating up the curb but it is still at a low level but it will accelerate up now really quite rapidly.”

He said if one person in a household starts to display symptoms, “the whole household stays at home”.

He added: “People need to think through the practicalities of their own position.

“The reason for this is that they are helping to stop (coronavirus) being transmitted across the community.”

He added social restrictions would be “very difficult for people to maintain” but they would be “doing it to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed”.

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“And a lot of what we are trying to do is trying to reduce the chance that those indirect deaths might occur.”

Professor Whitty said the measures had the capacity to “significantly to pull down the peak of this infection wave and therefore make it easier for the NHS and particularly the ventilation support to be able to cope with the wave that is heading its way”.

Mr Johnson added: “It is now clear that the peak of the epidemic is coming faster in some parts of the country than in others. And it looks as though London is now a few weeks ahead.

“It’s important that Londoners now pay special attention to what we’re saying about avoiding non-essential contact and to take particularly seriously the advice about working from home and avoiding confined spaces such as pubs and restaurants.”

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Mr Whitty went on to defend the Government’s testing regime.

There was “complete surveillance” testing in intensive care, hospitals were also testing patients with pneumonia and GPs were testing in the community.

“We do intend to continue to scale up testing,” he said, adding efforts were already “substantial” with more than 44,000 tests conducted.

At the moment tests were only useful for people who were currently sick, but it would be “transformational ” if there was a way to find out whether people had previously had it.

That would show what proportion of people can get the disease without any symptoms, he said, adding that Public Health England was “very rapidly” developing such a test.

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