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LONDON: Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Thursday Britain had not yet reached the peak of the coronavirus epidemic and that it was too early to lift the lockdown.
Experts were still gathering data on the lockdown and it was too early to say conclusively whether it was working, he told reporters.
Raab, standing in for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, told reporters he did not expect to be able to say more on the lockdown until late next week.
Britain announced another 881 deaths of people testing positive for coronavirus in Thursday’s daily update, bringing the country’s total toll to 7,978.
Meanwhile, the British government on Thursday expanded its overdraft with the Bank of England to help weather coronavirus turmoil.
The government’s “ways and means facility” — effectively its overdraft at the BoE — is also being used to temporarily help finance spending on COVID-19 emergency measures, the Treasury and the central bank announced in a joint statement.
A limit of £370 million ($455 million, 420 million euros) has been extended by an undisclosed amount, while the government has pledged stimulus worth billions of pounds.
The government will continue to use markets as the main source of cash, while its virus-emergency response will be “fully funded” via normal debt channels, it said.
“HM Treasury and the Bank of England have agreed to extend temporarily the use of the... long-established Ways and Means facility,” read a joint statement.
“As a temporary measure, this will provide a short-term source of additional liquidity to the government if needed to smooth its cashflows and support the orderly functioning of markets, through the period of disruption from COVID-19.”
Any money drawn from the overdraft facility will be paid back as soon as possible before the end of the year, according to the statement.