Downing Street scraps weekend coronavirus briefings
Downing Street has announced it will no longer be holding the coronavirus press briefings on weekends, due to low TV ratings.
Number 10 said the briefings will continue Monday to Friday and the Prime Minister will host at least one a week, according to the PM’s spokesman.
The daily briefings were introduced on 16 March before Boris Johnson imposed the national lockdown a week later. The PM and cabinet ministers have fronted the briefings, flanked by senior government advisers including the chief medical officer Chris Whitty.
Downing Street gives journalists – both national and regional – the opportunity to ask questions and has recently allowed the public to send in questions relating to the easing of lockdown measures.
Number 10 also announced today that the next phase of easing the lockdown – the reopening of non-essential shops on 15 June – is “not dependent” on the alert status moving from four to three.
Last month Johnson said the five-level alert system would help the government decide how tough social distancing measures need to be, where level five is a “material risk of healthcare services being overwhelmed” and level one is the virus is no longer present in the UK.
Number 10 has instead said that the easing of restrictions will be based on Dominic Raab’s initial five steps, which focus on a sustained fall in the death rate and rate of infection.
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