Covid-19: UK deaths likely to come down slowly, Whitty warns

The number of daily coronavirus deaths in the UK is likely to come down "relatively slowly", England's chief medical officer has warned.

Prof Chris Whitty said the UK was going to see "a lot more deaths" over the next few weeks before the effects of the vaccination programme were felt.

Current restrictions were "just about holding" in lowering infection rates, he told a Downing Street briefing.

It comes as the UK surpassed 100,000 coronavirus deaths on Tuesday.

Prof Whitty told a Downing Street press conference the rolling seven-day average for deaths was 1,242 - "an incredibly high number" - and unlikely to come down quickly.

"I think we have to be realistic that the rate of mortality, the number of people dying a day, will come down relatively slowly over the next two weeks - and will probably be flat for a while now."

Prof Whitty said the number of people testing positive for coronavirus was "still at a very high number, but it has been coming down".

But he cautioned against relaxing restrictions "too early", as Office for National Statistics data showed a "rather slower" decrease.

The number of people in hospital with Covid-19 in the UK had "flattened off", he said, but was still an "incredibly high number" and "substantially above the peak in April".

Prof Whitty said the new, more transmissible variant discovered in the south east of England at the end of last year had altered the UK's situation"very substantially" and had made it "much harder" to bring infection levels down.

"We were worried two weeks ago that the measures we have at the moment were not enough to hold this new variant," he told the press conference.

"I think what the data I showed you at the beginning of the slide sessions shows is that the rates are just about holding with the new variant, with what everybody's doing.

"It's going to be much harder because of this new variant and I think we have to be realistic about that."

Sir Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, said that more than a quarter of a million severely ill coronavirus patients have been looked after in hospital since the pandemic started last year.

"This is not a year that anybody is going to want to remember nor is it a year that across the health service any of us will ever forget," he said.