THE UK has moved into the "delay phase" of tackling coronavirus, according to England's chief medical officer.
The announcement came after three new cases in Scotland brought the UK to its 90th case.
Professor Chris Whitty, who is being grilled by MPs on the Health and Social Care Committee, said there was evidence of community transmission between people who had no connections to overseas cases or returning travellers.
He said: "We have moved from a situation where we are mainly in contain, with some delay built in, to we are now mainly delay," he said, although elements of the contain process were remaining in place.
The delay phase means measures to tackle coronavirus are ramped up to delay its spread.
The Government's battle plan says of the delay phase: "Action that would be considered could include population distancing strategies (such as school closures, encouraging greater home working, reducing the number of large-scale gatherings) to slow the spread of the disease throughout the population, while ensuring the country's ability to continue to run as normally as possible."
READ MORE: Coronavirus: New cases of the illness confirmed in Scotland
Overall, current figures show 80 cases in England, six in Scotland, one in Wales and three in Northern Ireland.
Whitty went on to say the number of deaths from Covid-19 could be a “very small number” as a proportion, but a “large absolute number” depending on how many people become infected.
The impact on the NHS would be most sharply felt over a period of around three weeks to nine weeks at the height of the epidemic.
“For those people who get the disease severe enough to need hospital but not severe enough, fortunately, to kill them, they will still need NHS and health care.
“One of the things which is clear, if you model out the epidemic, is you will get 50% of all the cases over a three-week period and 95% of the cases over a nine-week period, if it follows the trajectory we think it’s likely to.
“If all of those were spaced out on the NHS over two or three years, that would be easily manageable, but it’s the fact they are so heavily concentrated.”
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