UK coronavirus deaths and cases

Four nations have 'largely moved in lockstep' - Shapps

The first question comes from a member of the public Stephen,
from Country Durham.

He says he lives closer to Edinburgh than London and asks

whether he should follow the advice of the Scottish first minister
or that of Downing Street.

In response Shapps says the four nations have "largely moved in

lockstep" but the prime minister will saying more on the next
phase of the pandemic response tomorrow.

Shapps adds the government wants to make its messaging

"straight forward" and the next stage will also involve "clear
messaging".

Testing at a 'high plateau'

Prof Van-Tam has shown a graph of the UK's daily testing data. He
said we appeared to be at a "high plateau" around the 100,000
testing mark.

"This is now at a much, much higher level than it ever was at the
beginning of this crisis," he said.

Turning to the increase in new cases, he said the data shows how
mass swab testing is helping identify cases of Covid-19 in the
population but acknowledged the difficulty in identifying trends
from this data.

"Interpret the data with a degree of care please," he said of the

numbers, which show 3,896 more cases were confirmed in the UK
in the 24 hours until 09:00 on Saturday.