Prime Minister Boris Johnson, on Thursday, said the United Kingdom is “past the peak” of its coronavirus pandemic, adding that the country is “on the downward slope.”
More than 165,000 people have contracted COVID-19, including the Prime Minister himself.
He was in intensive care earlier this month, briefly raising questions about Great Britain’s leadership in the crisis.
Over 26,000 people in the United Kingdom have died from the virus.
On Thursday, Johnson gave his first press conference since his recovery.
He vowed to put out a plan to get the country’s economy reopened next week.
“I will be setting out a comprehensive plan next week to explain first how we get our economy moving, how we can get our children back to school, back into childcare, second, and thirdly how we can travel to work and how we can make life in the workplace safer,” Johnson said.
Lockdown measures in the country were put into place on March 23, and are slated to be reviewed next week.
The prime minister highlighted that any lifted measures would be crucial to review to ensure they would not spark a second outbreak of cases and overwhelm the National Health Service.
He added that he would like to maintain suppression of virus cases while steadily reopening the economy.
