Number of coronavirus patients being treated in UK hospitals passes 10,000 with a third in London

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The number of people being treated for coronavirus in UK hospitals has exceeded 10,000.

Around a third of those hospitalised are in London.

Addressing the figures at Tuesday's Downing Street press conference, NHS England's medical director Professor Stephen Powis said the next two weeks "will be critical" to seeing how the country's Covid-19 outbreak develops.

He told reporters the “Great British public” were heeding social distancing advice and reducing contact, but stressed that the country was still only at "the start of the battle."

Across the country, 10,767 virus patients are now being cared for in hospitals, with more than 3,000 in the capital alone.

MD of NHS England, Professor Stephen Powis
via REUTERS

Professor Powis said that the rate of hospitalisation of cases for Covid-19 was still increasing, as was expected at this stage of the epidemic.

However, he said that if the number of infections started to drop, then in the next few weeks the “hope” was that the number of hospitalisations would also begin to fall.

“The good news here is that that line is not going up very steeply but we are not out of the woods. We need to keep our foot on the pedal,” he said.

During the Westminster briefing, Cabinet minister Michael Gove also announced that thousands of new ventilators for the NHS would be available from next week.

In the last few days, around 1,000 per day have been taken into hospital with Covid-19.

A total of 1,789 patients have now died overall in UK hospitals as of 5pm on Monday, the Department of Health said, up by 381 from 1,408 the day before.

The jump is by far the biggest day-on-day rise in the number of deaths since the outbreak began.

Mr Gove said the sharp rise in UK deaths from coronavirus was “deeply shocking” but he could not say exactly when the peak of the epidemic would come.

“There’s not a fixed date like Easter when you know that the peak will come, it depends on the actions of all of us,” he told reporters.

“We can delay that peak, we can flatten the curve through our own particular actions.”

He said despite signs that interventions were working, “now is absolutely not the time for people to imagine there can be any relaxation or slackening” of lockdown measures.

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