Is coronavirus slowing down in the UK? How social distancing measures are working to reduce the spread

The UK has been put under a three-week lockdown period with strict social distancing measures in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus.

While the lockdown has only been in place for a week, the virus outbreak does appear to be “slowing”, a leading scientist and government adviser has said.

“Early signs of slowing”

Professor Neil Ferguson, who has been studying the coronavirus outbreak, said the data is now showing signs that the strict social distancing measures are beginning to work, despite the number of daily reported deaths still climbing.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “In the UK we can see some early signs of slowing in some indicators - less so because deaths are lagged by a long time from when measures come into force.

“But we look at the numbers of new hospital admissions today (30 Mar), for instance, that does seem to be slowing down a little bit now.

“It’s not yet plateaued as the numbers are increasing each day, but the rate of that increase has slowed.

“We see similar patterns in a number of European countries.”

Are the lockdown measures working?

Professor Ferguson’s assessment that the UK is showing some signs of the virus slowing down suggests that the lockdown social distancing measures could be effective.

However, he acknowledged that testing would need to significantly increase in order to more accurately show if infection rates were slowing.

Ferguson said that around three to five per cent of people in central London could already have been infected with the virus, with the figure possibly being higher in individual hotspots, while the number of infections across the whole country is likely to be slightly lower at two to three per cent.

He added that the next crucial step is to get the antibody tests, which can determine whether a person has already had the virus, with hopes these could be operational within “days rather than weeks”.

How could testing help slow the virus outbreak?

Coronavirus testing currently involves taking a throat swab from a person and running the results through a machine in a laboratory to test for the virus’s genetic material.

Millions of 15-minute home coronavirus tests are soon due to be available on the high street, or for Amazon delivery to people self-isolating, according to Public Health England (PHE).

The home test involves pricking a finger to produce a drop of blood, which is then analysed on a device which looks like a pregnancy test.