Questions remain over the UK’s coronavirus strategy in the absence of Boris Johnson as the Prime Minister was spending a second night in intensive care.
Johnson’s condition on Tuesday night remained “stable” as he stayed in St Thomas’s for “close monitoring”, according to Downing Street.
While he was said to be still in “good spirits”, concerns were raised over when the lockdown measures will be reviewed – and England’s chief medical officer admitted the UK has “a lot to learn” from Germany’s expansive testing scheme.
But there was cautious optimism from chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance after he said the fight against Covid-19 “could be moving in the right direction”.
It was announced that the prime minister had been diagnosed with the virus on March 27.
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Meanwhile the first of the NHS Nightingale hospitals, at London’s ExCel Centre, received its first patients on Tuesday.
The Nightingale was built to boost treatment capacity in London but officials stressed that limits had not been reached at other sites across the capital.
And there is the sad news about a doctor who specialised in treating the elderly who died after testing positive for Covid-19.
Anton Sebastianpillai, who had a long association with Kingston Hospital in south-west London, died on Saturday, four days after being admitted to the intensive care unit, a spokeswoman said.
The consultant geriatrician, who qualified as a doctor in Sri Lanka in 1967, finished his last shift on March 20.
A spokeswoman for Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said: “It is with great sadness that I confirm the death of a consultant geriatrician who was part of the team at Kingston Hospital.
“Dr Anton Sebastianpillai died on Saturday having been cared for in the hospital’s intensive care unit since March 31.
“We would like to extend our sincere condolences to his family.”
