Chief scientific advisor, patrick valans. From the beginning of this crisis i followed the advice of our world leading scientists to defeat coronavirus by taking the right measures at the right time. What Everybody Needs to recognize is that our n. H. S. Like any World Class Health service, has only limited numbers of doctors, nurses, and specialist equipment. So the more people who become sick at any one time, the harder it is for n. H. S. To cope. And so its vital to delay the spread of the disease and reduce the number of people needing hospital treatment at any one time. Thats why we have given the clear instruction that people must stay at home unless they have one of the reasons we set out. And with your help we will slow the spread of the disease. I want to thank everyone whos been following the clear rules that we set out on monday, and i want to thank everyone in nhs, the frontline of the fight against coronavirus, and of course all our public services. Our teachers and our school staff, the transport workers, police officers, everyone who is keeping this country going. But i also want to offer a special thank you to everyone who has now volunteered to help the n. H. S. When we launched the appeal last night we hoped to get 250,000 volunteers over a few days. I can tell you that in just 24 hours 405,000 people have responded to the call. They will be driving medicines from pharmacies to patients. Theyll be bringing patients home from hospital. Very importantly theyll be making regular phone calls to check on and support people who are staying on their own at home. And they will be absolutely crucial in the fight against this identify vie russ. That against this virus. That is already in one day as many volunteers as the population of coventry. So to all of you and to all former n. H. S. Staff coming back into the service, i say thank you on behalf of the entire country. I want to take some questions t finally i want to remind corepolicy. H our stay at home. Protect the n. H. S. And save lives. Thank you. I think well go straight to questions and we are going to hear first of all i think from laura of the b. B. C. , are you there . Reporter yes. Prime minister, can you honestly say the government is coping . There arent enough tests. People are struggling to make ends meet. Some people are being forced to go to work when they dont feel they are safe. Is that coping . Can i ask the medics as well, if we already have the kinds of tests you would like to see, how much of a difference would it have made to your ability to fight the disease . Prime minister johnson first of all, laura, on the tests, a Huge National program of testing is being rolled out, but ill hand over to patrick and chris to say more about testing and how we are going to do it. But on the National Effort to protect those whose jobs, livelihoods are tret threatened, i think threatened, i think everybody understands the challenge the country faces. We have to get through this together and we are getting through it together. With an Unprecedented Program of support for not just the businesses but for workers of all kinds across the country. Never in our history has the government put its arms around people in the way that we are doing now to help them get through this difficult time. And yes, its absolutely true that the measures to support people in employment are exceptional and extraordinary, of your salary up to 2,500 pounds per month we are standing behind. We are also in the course of the next couple days youll hear more from the chancellor tomorrow about what we are doing to help the selfemployed. I think people do understand that the complex it of their working arrangements has been harder to come up with the right tailored program for the selfemployed as well. That is coming forward tomorrow. I do think that when you look at the shear scale of what the government is doing to get this country through, we will to answer your question directly, we will cope and we are coping very well under the most challenging possible circumstances. But most important thing to enable us to get through it well together and to come out well together as i think we can, as i know we can, is that we all follow the instructions that the government has given, stay at home, protect the n. H. S. , and thats the way to save lives. On testing chris, would you like to say more . In terms of testing there are Different Things you use testing for. Some of which we have tests available for and have done throughout. Some which we do not. There are different answers defend pending which you are talking about. Starting with the antigen testing, people who currently have the disease, we initially were using that to help screen people who came from highrisk countries. When that ceased to be a central policy, we moved on to testing people in intensive cares and hospital, and we have sufficient testing for that at the moment. The system is working for and being scaled up. That side of testing is in place and is working well. If a patient gets as far as hospital, we are confident on the testing. And on the scale up. The thing we would like to do next, which would certainly make a difference less to the disease but definitely to n. H. S. Is test n. H. S. And other critical workers who are selfisolating who currently are not being tested because we do not have sufficient testing. This is a Global Program because basically every country is wanting this new test which for a disease that wasnt actually being tested for anywhere three months ago. Everybody wants this. There is a global shortage and thats a bottleneck for us. But the next priority is to get critical workers back to work or say to them you have got this. We would like to that, not to fight the disease but support n. H. S. Once we have more testing than we need for that capacity, we want to go out and test a much wider range of people with mild symptoms. Some people are having it as part of our observation system. Thats the pryor at thisization list. Secondly, there are the tests we want to have which have not yet absolutely evaluated but critical once we have them that can tell someone whether they have had the virus. This is the Antibody Test. You cant do that in the first few days after someone has had a fever. After a few weeks, possibly short as one week, that will allow us to be able to say to n. H. S. Workers, other workers, look, you have had this infection at least for the short time. And possibly for quite a long time. We think its likely you are protected against this and you can go back to work and be confident it you get a cough and fever will not be coronavirus. Thats being evaluated this week. But its not there. On the first one our bottleneck is global shores r shortages which we are doing our level best to free up. It would make it a lot better for us to be able to test health care workers. It testing is crucial. Absolutely crucial. Yes we need more of it as chris has said. The other thing thats going to be important with the Antibody Test, to be able to work out how many people have had the disease asymptom matically. Thats going to be important to nderstand what to do next. These tests are important and we need more of them. The one thing thats worth, no test is a bad test. Instead of telling someone inaccurately either they have had it or not had it could lead to drug mistakes being made. We do not want to go ahead with testing until we are confident of the technology. If it means a delay to get there, that delay is worth having because that is, as chris said, if you tell someone, its ok you havent got it and they have got it, that is not a good position to be in. If your you tell somebody they are immune and not, we must make sure we get this right. Prime minister johnson on the numbers of people who have the disease astim toe matically symptomatically. I think a lot of people have seen that. That story, how do you evaluate that at this stage . We dont know at the moment. Thats why the Antibody Test is important. There are estimates that up to 80 or more people werent detected. There are estimates that of those who are positive, thats a small percentage of the pol pew lation tested positive, quite a number were asymtomatic in italy. Thats why its so important to et this test in place. Prime minister johnson beth. Thank you, Prime Minister. Reporter you said earlier you are not closing down the whole of the u. K. Economy. But other countries such as italy, a country you said we were two or three weeks behind, have now introduced a very strict lockdown. Wouldnt you save more lives if you did keep all nonessential workers at home . If i may, a question on testing. C. M. O. , p. H. E. Englan is set to get 3. 5 million testing kits could be available showing whether you have coronavirus or not as early as next week. In practical terms, who will get those tests and how . How transformational do you think this will be in terms of fighting coronavirus. Thank you. Prime minister johnson thanks very much, beth. In terms of the ep pima logical value of epidemiological value of asking people to say home, the most important thing i can say is repeat the basic message. If you can stay at home, then you overwhelmingly should stay at home. Thats our most important advice. If its absolutely necessary for you to go to work, to a place of work, then its vital that your employer follows the rules as set out by Public Health england and ensures you have the protections that you social proper rules on distancing do apply. I wonder a comment on the value of what we are doing in terms of the beth asked reasonably enough about not closing down the whole u. K. Economy which we are not doing, but we are simply asking people to stay at home. I can certainly give might want to add to to this. The first thing is the modeling, every country does it slightly differently and every country has a slightly different epidemic pattern at this point in time. Thats entirely reasonable. All of us are dealing with a new infection and therefore having to take the science from quite a low base very fast in terms of advice to give. The modeling we have done here which patrick can talk about in detail was based on the idea there would be quite a lot of people would have to go to work as part of this. That is the basis on which the modeling is done. But we absolutely need people to avoid anything that is in any way discretionary, where people can choose whether they do it or not. Thats why all other social activity, has to stop. Is to allow these absolutely essential things to continue. Thats the basis of doing this. There is an additional reason which is we have to remember that this is these many of the things we have to do are going to have to be sustained for a reasonably long period of time. And broadly the more difficult you make it for people, the less easy it is to sustain it. There is some degree of tradeoff between those two things. In terms of testing, i want to i want to be really clear about what we can and cant do. We certainly have acquired for the u. K. A lot of tests. Ill go back to my previous answer and patricks previous answer, the key thing for us to do is evaluate are these tests Accurate Enough to be used by the general public . If the answer is they are all incredibly accurate, len then well work out the quick and effective way to release these. If it turned out none are accurate, we would not wish to release any of them. Inaccurate testing is something we should really be avoiding. We are going really fast on the evaluation, and based on that well be able to decide what to do next. Patrick, do you want to add anything . I reemphasize, what we are trying to do is to break the transmission of virus from one household to another. We are trying to break the transmission of virus in society. To do that we need to keep separate. The clearest way to keep separate is to stay in your house. Thats why thats the core message. There are people who have to go to work in some jobs. You cannot stay in the household. The most obvious one is the n. H. S. But there are others as well. Its important to break the transmission where possible to stay two meters apart. Thats what we need to keep focusing on. We are trying to stopt transmission of this virus between people, between households and break that chain. In terms of whether its transformational, in the long run it will completely transform what we can do. In the short run, this Antibody Test, which is the one we were talking about these big numbers, i think is less important than the other one, the antigen test i was talking about earlier. Prime minister johnson i should have said more clearly, perhaps at the beginning, you should stay at home except for those very few exceptions. Ill spell them out again people have forgotten. Unless you need to get essential supplies, unless you are on a specific medical mission or helping the vulnerable or unless you are taking daily exercise and remember the daily exercise is a very important provided you stay away from other people. Gary, channel 4. Reporter the frontline staff antinational Health Service and working in social couldnt be clearer, they want that test on covid19, but whether they have got it, they want it now. The house of commons again and again today you said they are going to get it as soon as possible. Might have a little bit more confidence about where we are going if you could answer this question. How did we come to be so woefully behind other countries that have checked, evaluated, and deployed tests in much, much bigger numbers already . Prime minister johnson thanks, gary. I repeat the answer i gave earlier in the house of commons. Well do it as soon as possible. We are massively ramping up our testing programs. Buying in huge numbers of tests to see whether you have had it already. But also pushing forward very fast on testing people to see whether they currently have it. The antigen or Antibody Tests that have been described. As the Health Secretary as aid sade, we are going up from 5,000 to 10,000 tests per day to 25,000 and so on. Hopefully very soon up to 250,000 a day. To answer your question about the types of tests that we have, the differences that you see in between the u. K. s provision for testing and other countries, i think it would probably be most helpful if i again passed to chris and patrick to explain. Chris. I think in terms of the testing, first of all why the delays in the u. K. System. There are multiple components to these tests. Including the chemicals that make them up, swabs you use, and shortages along many of these supply chains essentially because every country in the world is simultaneously wanting this new thing. Some components are old. But the scale of it is something which is obviously occurred at extraordinary speed. Thats just a practical reality. Anyone who understands how supply chains work and huge demands for this globally would understand that. Comparing Different Countries is difficult. Different countries have different testing strategies. You are right. What we need to do is look at those countries that have actually got more testing than us and work out how to do it the way they are doing it as best we can in our own system, using our own testing systems. Thats something we are doing very actively at the moment. Clearly we are doing loot of thefting here. Looking at the numbers we have done so far 97,000 tests already conducted. Its not there is no testing going on. What we need, clearly, is to scale it up. Prime minister johnson i would just add to that that we have done many more tests, not that this is a competition, we have done more tests than most other european countries. And you are totally right, gary, that the priority should be and will be getting those tests to our frontline staff in the n. H. S. We are going to do that as fast as we possibly can. Francis elliott of the times. Reporter yes. Hello. Public Health England this morning suggested these Antibody Tests if they work could be available from online stores. Can we just explain i understand they may not work. But if they do work, how are you going to prioritize who gets those tests . Is it just going to be a scramble . How do you verify the test results . Presumably these will be critically important whether you can work with Vulnerable People or begin to go back to normal work perhaps. Lastly, how do you collect the results so you can model whats happening elsewhere . It seems odd that you do selftesting and this is obviously a very important result. Prime minister johnson chris. What well do, once we are confident of which tests work and how many we have available to use, there is a hierarchy of things we need to do. We start off by answering that critical question that patrick was talking about, what proportion of people get this without any symptoms . That has big implication force the way we manage this. Thats the early priority. Then make sure we get n. H. S. Workers tested to make sure we can work out who is immune, almost certainly immune to this infection and who isnt. Well basically go out in kind of a graded way from there. I do not think, i want to be clear, that this is something well suddenly be ordering on the internet next week. The evaluation, the first critical uses, and spread it out from that point of view. We need to do that in a systematic way. Your point, which is right, the first thing we need to do is collect the information and understand this epidemic. Its not 3. 5 million freeforall with no data being collected. We need to answer the critical questions and need to make sure the right people get the test first in order to allow workers to go back and the other points chris has made. Prime minister johnson thanks very much. Sam, the express. Reporter thank you. Prime minister, your critics have suggested that you have to be dragged into taking the action you are now from monday. And that you allowed the virus to spread. Also if i may, you suggested in the commons earlier that you might introduce new laws to deal with profiteering. Are you angry at retailers and individuals who are trying to exploit this crisis . How far are you prepared to go to include jail terms . Prime minister johnson thanks very much, sam. On the first very important question, as i said right at the beginning. Indeed right from the beginning of this crisis, we were going to do the right measures at the ight time not according to politic dictate but the best scientific and medical advice in the world. There are good reasons for wanting to tackle an epidemic strictly in accordance with the scientific advisors. Thats what we have done. I con