Coronavirus UK: Up To 55K People Could Be Infected, Government Says

By Staff, Agencies

As many as 55,000 people in the United Kingdom could have the coronavirus, the government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance told MPs.

He also told the Commons’ Health and Social Care Committee that keeping the death toll from the outbreak below 20,000 would represent a “good outcome”.

The estimates came as NHS England announced it was suspending non-urgent operations for at least three months from 15 April to make more hospital beds available for coronavirus patients.

Some 15,000 beds could be freed by discharging patients from hospitals, NHS England chief executive Sir Simon Stevens told the committee.

Relatively, Prime Minister Boris Johnson previously suggested that as many as 10,000 people could be infected by the end of last week, though only 1,950 people have so far been diagnosed in tests.

Jeremy Hunt, chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, told Sir Patrick that he understood that around 1,000 people might be infected for every recorded death, and that this might mean that “there are potentially now about 55,000 cases”.