Dimitris Kouimtsidis
THE UK lockdown has been extended another three weeks due to coronavirus.
Dominic Raab led the daily Number 10 briefing and announced that the lockdown will be in place until at least May 8.
The Foreign Secretary said: “We still don’t have the infection rate down as far as we need to.”
It comes as the UK recorded another 861 COVID-19 related deaths, taking the total to 13,729.
The 46-year-old said: “There is light at the end of the tunnel but we are now at both a delicate and a dangerous stage in this pandemic.
“If we rush to relax the measures that we have in place we would risk wasting all the sacrifices and all the progress that has been made.
“That would risk a quick return to another lockdown with all the threat to life that a second peak to the virus would bring and all the economic damage that a second lockdown would carry.”
Ministers are required by law to assess whether the lockdown is working every three weeks.
Although Raab could not provide a definitive timeline of when this would end, he did state that Boris Johnson’s prediction of three months at the start of the lockdown still applied.
