Here are the main points from the press conference held by Boris Johnson. He was joined by Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser. Ministers will within a fortnight advise anyone with a fever or a mild respiratory tract infection to stay at home for seven days, Whitty revealed. He said that the government was not giving out this advice now, because the chances of someone with a fever now having coronavirus are very low, he said. But he said that would change very quickly. Soon the number of infections would rise “really quite fast”, he said. He went on: We are now very close to the time, probably within the next 10 to 14 days, when the modelling would imply we should move to a situation where everybody with even minor respiratory tract infections or a fever should be self-isolating for a period of seven days. This advice is likely to have huge repercussions for workplaces across the country. Johnson stressed that it was important for the government not to implement its delay and mitigating measures too early. He said: It is absolutely critical in managing the spread of this virus that we take the right decisions at the right time based on the latest and the best evidence, so we mustn’t do things which have no or limited medical benefit, nor things which could turn out actually to be counter-productive. He sounded more defensive on this point than he was when he held a press conference last week, reflecting the fact that the government is starting to face criticism for allegedly being too complacent. Johnson said that he was no longer shaking hands. Last week he was still shaking hands, but he said at today’s Commonwealth Day service he was advised against this. He explained: We were all given an instruction not to shake hands and there’s a good reason for not shaking hands, which is that the behavioural psychologists say that if you don’t shake somebody’s hand then that sends an important message to them about the importance of washing your hands. So there’s a subliminal cue there to everybody to wash your hands, which is, I think I’m right in saying ... far more important. Whitty refused to comment on suggestions that 2m people might be hospitalised. He said figures like this were “largely speculative”. Whitty said that from tomorrow the government would start screening everyone arriving at hospital with a respiratory illness for coronavirus. Until now people have only been screened if they are in intensive care and have coronavirus-type symptoms, he said. Vallance said the aim of the measures to be introduced by the government would be to lower the mortality rate of those in the at-risk group by 20 to 30%. But he said it would be wrong to try to “suppress” the disease completely because it could result in a winter outbreak at a time of maximum pressure for the NHS. He said: What you can’t do is suppress this thing completely, and what you shouldn’t do is suppress it completely because all that happens then is it pops up again later in the year when the NHS is at a more vulnerable stage in the winter and you end up with another problem. That’s all from me for today. Thanks for the comments.