Go back to work tomorrow if you can, says Boris Johnson

The Prime Minister has set out three steps to lifting the coronavirus lockdown including in schools and workplaces subject to a number of conditions.

Boris Johnson spoke from 10 Downing Street as the number of deaths rose by 269 to 31,855 and the number of new cases went up 3,923 to 219,183.

Mr Johnson urged people to go back to work tomorrow if they can but said that, if possible, people should drive, walk or cycle rather than use public transport.

Critically for Brighton and Hove, it is unlikely that pubs, cafés and hotels will reopen before July but children look likely to have a phased return to school from next month.

The government’s advice has changed from “stay home” to “stay alert” – and Mr Johnson said that the passengers arriving in Britain – or returning to the country – would face two weeks in quarantine.

The televised announcement was made as the number of hospital deaths confirmed by Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (BSUH) rose to 110.

The NHS trust runs the Royal Sussex County Hospital and the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital, in Brighton, and the Princess Royal Hospital, in Haywards Heath.

The number of confirmed cases of the covid-19 coronavirus has reached 399 in Brighton and Hove.

This equates to a rate of 137.4 per 100,000 people – one of the lowest rates in the country. The rate for England is 242.9.

In neighbouring Mid Sussex, which is also served by BSUH, there have been 277 cases of the coronavirus – a rate of 185 per 100,000.

And across the UK a total of 3,923 new cases have been confirmed, making 219,183 in all since the start of the pandemic.

The number of hospital deaths confirmed by the Sussex Community Foundation Trust is 15. The trust has its headquarters at Brighton General Hospital which is no longer used as a hospital. But the trust runs hospitals elsewhere across Sussex.

Western Sussex Hospitals, which runs hospitals in Worthing and Chichester and shares its leadership with BSUH, has now recorded 86 deaths. East Sussex Healthcare, which runs hospitals in Eastbourne and Hastings, has reported 69, while the figure for Surrey and Sussex Healthcare is 208.

The number of coronavirus cases in West Sussex so far is 1,228. The number in East Sussex has now reached 648. With the 399 cases in Brighton and Hove, the figure for Sussex as a whole now totals 2,275.

Mr Johnson said that he had “a conditional plan”, adding: “Since our priority is to protect the public and save lives, we cannot move forward unless we satisfy the five tests.

• We must protect our NHS.
• We must see sustained falls in the death rate.
• We must see sustained and considerable falls in the rate of infection.
• We must sort out our challenges in getting enough PPE to the people who need it, and yes, it is a global problem but we must fix it.
• And last, we must make sure that any measures we take do not force the reproduction rate of the disease – the R – back up over one so that we have the kind of exponential growth we were facing a few weeks ago.

“We must reverse rapidly the awful epidemics in care homes and in the NHS and, though the numbers are coming down sharply now, there is plainly much more to be done.