THERE is “not a huge amount of room for manoeuvre” in lifting the social restrictions Britain is enduring with the coronavirus lockdown, a UK Government expert has warned.

At the daily Downing St briefing, Prof Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, sought to play down expectations of a significant change to the lockdown measures any time soon.

Referring to the R-rate of transmission, he insisted the key thing was to keep it below one and that, currently, it appeared to be somewhere between 0.5 and one; anything above one would mean the infection rate would grow exponentially again.

Prof Whitty explained: “If it was lower than that, it would give us some room for manoeuvre, it[the current level] gives us some room for manoeuvre but it does not give a huge amount of room for manoeuvre.

“That is one of the things ministers are going to have to consider; how to make sure we keep the R below one given where we are at the moment thanks to what everybody is doing.

“But there isn’t a magic number here; lower is better but it’s not that there is a specific number that has to be the right number.”

He went on: “What we are trying to do in very short order is try to get a feel for what are the combinations of different things, which still keep the R below one – which is an absolutely critical thing – but allow opening up different bits of society. The decision about how the different combinations go together is for ministers.”

Prof Whitty added: “There is no perfect solution where we are going to end up being able to do all the things people want and at the same time keep R below one, so there are going to have to be some very difficult choices…and choices around schools will be one of those.”

Earlier, Boris Johnson addressed the nation from the steps of No 10 and urged it to “keep going” as he made clear the lockdown restrictions would continue.

The Prime Minister said the coronavirus was the country’s single biggest challenge since the Second World War and echoed Winston Churchill’s famous phrase about the “beginning of the end,” saying Britain was “coming now to the end of the first phase of this conflict”.

He insisted the country was “beginning to turn the tide” against Covid-19 but warned that now was the moment of “maximum risk,” that going too early in lifting the restrictions would risk a “new wave of death and disease but also an economic disaster”.

As the next lockdown review date is on May 7, Mr Johnson spoke about “in the coming days” how the Government would reveal how it might “begin gradually to refine the economic and social restrictions”.

In other developments -

*the UK Government announced families of NHS and social care workers who have lost loved ones to the pandemic would be entitled to a £60,000 payment in England. The Scottish Government will receive a share of the available money and is considering introducing a similar scheme north of the border. A spokesman said: “We are working with partners to finalise the scheme’s terms and conditions and aim to publish further details by May 1 with scheme benefits applying retrospectively to ensure no one is disadvantaged.”

*UK ministers are unlikely to announce this week whether the Government has or has not reached its target of 100,000 coronavirus tests a day by Thursday because of a “time-lag” in reporting the test results. Up to 9am on Saturday, some 29,508 tests had been carried out across Scotland, England and Wales while capacity was almost 54,000 a day.

*Matt Hancock, the UK Health Secretary, announced because of the lowering in hospitalisations due to Covid-19, the NHS in England would begin the restoration of other NHS services, “starting with the most urgent, like cancer care and mental health support".