BRITISH PRIME MINISTER Boris Johnson has said that the UK has started to “turn the tide” on the coronavirus and “begun to wrestle it to the floor”. 

Johnson was speaking outside 10 Downing Street after arriving back to the residence last night, three weeks after he was hospitalised with Covid-19. 

Johnson spent time in intensive care during his week in the hospital and has said he ‘owes his life’ to the medical team that looked after him. 

Speaking this morning, Johnson said that Covid-19 is “the biggest single challenge this country has faced since the war” and warned of a potential “second spike” if lockdown restrictions are lifted too soon. 

He asked the British people to “contain your impatience” about the ongoing measures but said that the country shouldn’t “throw away all the effort and sacrifice of the British people”.

“It is still true that this is the biggest single challenge this country has faced since the war, and I in no way minimise the continuing problems we face. And yet it is also true that we are making progress with fewer hospital admissions, fewer Covid-19 patients in ICU and real signs now that we are passing through the peak,” Johnson said. 

Thanks to our collective national resolve. We are on the brink of achieving that first clear mission, to prevent our National Health Service from being overwhelmed in a way that tragically, we have seen elsewhere. And that is how and why we are now beginning to turn the tide.

“If this virus were a physical assailant, an unexpected and invisible mugger, which I can tell you from personal experience it is, then this is the moment when we have begun together to wrestle it to the floor and say it follows that this is the moment of opportunity. This is the moment when we can press home, our advantage.”

Johnson then went on to warn about the danger of lifting measures too soon, saying the UK is “also the moment of maximum risk”.

I know how hard, and how stressful it has been to give up, even temporarily
that ancient and basic freedom, not seeing friends, not seeing loved ones, working from home, managing the kids, worrying about your job and your firm,” he said. 

I understand your impatience I share your anxiety. Without our private sector without the drive and commitment of the wealth creators of this country, there will be no economy to speak of. There will be no cash to pay for our public services no way of funding our NHS.

“And yes, I can see the long-term consequences of lockdown as clearly as anyone. And so yes I entirely share your government’s urgency. And yet we must also recognise the risk of a second spike. The risk of losing control of that virus and letting the reproduction rate go back over one because that would mean not only a new wave of death, disease but also an economic disaster.

When we’re sure that the first phase is over, and that we’re meeting our five tests: Deaths falling, NHS protected, rate of infection down, really sorting out the challenges of testing and PPE, avoiding a second peak. Then that will be the time to move on, in which we continue to suppress the disease and keeps the reproduction rate, the r rate down. But begin gradually to refine the economic and social restrictions, and one by one to fire up the engines of this vast UK economy.”