We've also today had Maur on the economic warfront, as it were.

We're going to get news tomorrow of what the government is going to the package.

They've got ready for self employed people.

But we also heard that the number of new applicants to trying it universal credit is running at seven toe eight times what it normally would be.

Absolutely extraordinary figures and 70 big things happening at the moment.

Some big things can almost pass you by.

Parliament has just just before it, Rose passed the contingency fund.

That's the ready cash that government always likes to have ready.

Normally, about 2% of the entire previous years spent about 10 billion.

It's just passed a law there that allows that to go up to 50% of the government's previous spend last year, about £266 billion.

Parliament, as I say, has risen.

Jeremy Corbyn was doing his last prime minister's questions as labor leader, and he said to Boris Johnson, Is there any way we can carry on scrutinizing you in these extraordinary times even while apartment is away?

The truth is, we don't know really how that will happen.

We can't be utterly sure Parliament comes back the day it's meant to on the 21st of April and in what form it comes back.

Just more uncertainty On the second full day of locked down police checking on London commuters this morning Well, last time, Adam down on the platforms.

Scenes like these still worry the government, but elsewhere signs that the lock down is being observed.

Trafalgar Square This morning.

All this emptiness coming at a great economic costs.

Welcome pensions secretary with her permanent secretary adjusting for social distance, their aides, told to do the same, told MPs.

There have been 477,000 new universal credit claims in the last nine days, so the universal credit system is open, ready to take that.

In fact, in the last nine days, we've processed nearly half a 1,000,000 claims.

We don't know if they're self employed or different stages.

Jeremy Corbyn that his last prime minister's question Time is Labour leader complained of universal credit claimants finding themselves at the back of massive cues last night.

They're accused of over 100 and 10,000 people trying to get onto the D W P system in order to register to apply for universal credit.

Will the prime minister now put extra resources and funding to boost the D.

W P capacity?

Prime minister said there would be helped with D.

W.

P and he made this wider from We're doing a quite extraordinary thing, which is for the first time in our history, to get through this crisis.

We are putting our arms as a country around every single worker, every single employee in this country.

The prime minister was repeatedly pressed on exactly when the N HS would have sufficient testing equipment to test N HS staff and others who need it good.

The prime minister give us some idea as to when we will be able to get back to routine testing in the community as happens in career in Germany and other countries and Should we not now introduce weekly tests for N HS staff so we can remove from them the fear that they might be infecting their own patients?

We're making huge progress.

We were by millions of antibody tests.

Just show whether or not you've had the disease on on his on his point that have been raised several times about how soon can we get any chest off another public sector workers tested in advance to see whether they have these?

That is as soon as we possibly can.

Can the prime minister tell the house in the 80,000 care homes around Britain what date will lay?

You expect tests to be carried out on the day that symptoms emerge on the on the on the test?

A zay said earlier on the answers were, We want to roll that out as soon as we possibly can.

Prime Minister, the frontline staff in the National Health Service and in working in social care couldn't be clearer.

They want that test on covered 19 that tells them whether they got it.

They want it now and in the House of Commons again and again today.

You said they're gonna get it as soon as possible.

People might have a a little bit more confidence about where we're going as a country.

If you could answer this question, maybe how did we come to be so woefully behind other countries that have checked, evaluated on deployed tests in much, much bigger numbers?

Already?

We are massively ramping up our our testing programs, buying in huge numbers of test to see whether you you've had it already, but also pushing forward very passed on testing people to see whether they currently have it.

Why the delays in the UK system up?

There are multiple components of these tests, including the chemicals that make them up, the swabs that you use and the wrist shortages along many of these supply chains.

Essentially because every country in the world is simultaneously wanting this new thing.

Comparing different countries is actually quite different is quite difficult.

Different countries got different testing strategies, but you're certainly right that what we need to do is look at those countries that have actually got more testing than us and work out how to do it the way they're doing it.

Prince Charles, it was announced, has had the test and has got the virus.

This was him avoiding handshakes.

Two days he's thought to have caught it.

Aides said Prince Charles had mild symptoms, prompting one SNP MSP to tweet.

Given if symptoms are said to be mild like many, I wonder how he was tested when many n hs and social care workers cannot get tested.

The pope and the archbishop of Canterbury coordinated a reading of the Lord's Prayer at 11 this morning, but the archbishop of Canterbury said it was to help people through a difficult time for Manchester, the cream has signified her royal assent to the following acts Contingencies Fund Act Corona Virus Act Parliament's last acts before closing early for Easter cross party backing for the contingency fund to rise from £10.6 billion to 266 billion on top of the emergency laws that give even more powers to a government already operating in wartime mode.

Very given well.

An announcement that the government has ordered millions of tests to show if you've had a Corona virus on have antibodies was challenged by the chief medical officer just hours later as he warned the tests might not even work on that.

If they are validated, they won't go to the general public, adding, It's not something you'll suddenly get on the Internet anytime soon.

Our health and social care correspondent Victoria McDonald reports, We've now bought 3.5 1,000,000 antibody tests that will allow people to see whether they have had the virus and are immune to it.

It was an announcement that surprised many.

An antibody test is the Holy Grail because it can show who has already had covered 19 and then they can safely go back to work.

But it's still not clear how reliable they're.

So they're currently being tested on Oxford.

This is what we were told this morning that a number of tests arrived.

Evaluation.

These are in Oxford.

At the moment, there will be a very effectively.

The several 1,000,000 tests have been purchased for use, so we need to evaluate the bark trees there.

That's because these are brand new.

Be clear that they do work as they claim to do so once they have been tested on.

That won't happen this week.

Then what's the What's the boat?

They testify that they will be distributed into the community in which there will be a sense of order and best buy.

By this afternoon, though, there appeared to be some rowing back.

We need to help make sure we can get N HS workers tested to make sure we can work out who is immune alarm a certain immune to this test things infection and who isn't.

And we will basically go out in kind of a graded way from there.

I do not think, and I want to be clear that this is something will suddenly be ordering on the Internet next week.

We need so not for the general public and not for anybody if they don't work, he said, raising the possibility that the health secretary's announcement might have bean premature.

There are significant problems to overcome with antibody tests that they might give a false result or give a positive result.

But for a different Corona virus, there are six other strains that affect humans.

There are, of course, tests which tell you if you do have the virus.

Up until recently, patients could be referred to these drive three stations and there are home testing kits like the one we revealed on Channel four news.

But the N HS test is still not available for health and social care workers only for patients in hospital with pneumonia or care home clusters.

In the midst of the gloom, there wants some hopeful news.

Professor Neil Ferguson, recovering at home from the virus, told the Common Science and Technology Committee that the lock down means wth e N h s should be able to cope.

He also said that the peak and demand for intensive care should be in about two or three weeks and should then decline thereafter.

In Wuhan, at the height of the China epidemic, they opened gymnasiums and conference centers for the less critically ill patients, while this recently housed the U.

N Climate change conference in Madrid.

Now it's a field hospital in a country overwhelmed by the virus.

And here, as health chiefs looked to Spain and Italy, they have begun the preparations for a Nightingale hospital at the Excel Centre in east London and the N, E.

C.

And Birmingham.

The details are scant, but 500 patients are expected to arrive next week, and we have seen this video from a man claiming to be working on the preparations today.

I didn't take this virus to be set very seriously until, you know, I saw this morning command.

And this is the size of a little plans are that they will scale up when they need to.

Victoria is with me now.

So there has been some confusion around testing in particular.

What?

Do you know what?

There is a problem with government announcements being made and then a few hours later, poor press officers who would be a government press officer right now having to try and clear up some of the misunderstandings or misinformation.

And that was the problem with testing.

These tests have to be validated, and it doesn't look like they're gonna be validated any time soon.

And boots put out a statement today saying they didn't know anything about these tests.

And yet we were told that that's where you might be able to get them.

Let's go to the what I didn't mention in my package there, But let's go to the problem off personal protective equipment.

Still, there is an issue with this.

I've been contacted by a doctor today saying that they at a major London hospital with a net worth star from another London hospital have now set up their own charity.

They're buying their own equipment because they just do not think they can get enough.

They will.

They can't get enough.

A GP has told us that they've been asking schools for their science lab goggles.

Now I put this problem with peopIe to Public Health England today, and they once again assured us that it walls being sorted.

I do understand that people sometimes feel concerned that they're not getting the right equipment on there has, as you've said, been a supply issue in some parts of the country over previous days.

That's being worked on very carefully as we speak.

This surprise been ramped up the military air involved in that.

My understanding is that that's likely to be completely resolved by the end of the week.

But there's a steps that the N.

H s have taken with a help line for any hospital or health care organization to call to make sure they get the surprise where they need them when they need them.

I want I want him to be right, but this is not what we're hearing on the ground from the staff who are at the front line that something else we're hearing as well.

Numerous people offering help and solutions with tests or building ventilators and not knowing where to go to in government and just reaching a brick wall, even though they do, they say, have these solutions.

It seems from the outside to be a huge problem.

This is in the middle of a crisis, and I think what people would like, particularly health care workers would like is more clarity.

Victoria, thank you.

Well, joining me now is Stevan Riley, a professor at Imperial College, London, on a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modeling, which advises the government on the U.

K's response to the Corona virus.

Professor, We saw a clip off Professor Fergusson giving evidence today, suggesting that's as things currently look, you think intensive care units and hospitals will be able to cope.

Why do you now think that, um, I think that's from a kind of careful analysis of the current occupancy levels, The recent trends on dhe, the information that the surge capacity planning that we've considered so that's those are probably the main factors going into Professor Ferguson's assessment.

So as far as you're concerned, the government is doing all it needs to do in terms of health service capacity.

I I think that's I think that's a bit simplistic.

I don't really think it's just the government.

I think if we really want to be sure that we're gonna that the capacity in the N H s is gonna is gonna be okay, it's It's down to us as much of the government to really, really had here, that the biggest uncertainties that we have in the modeling of the moment, all the level of it adherence to the state home request.

So I would phrase it more that way.

I think so.

What do you make of the ongoing political debate around the extent of the stay home instruction and whether workers who were non essential workers or no key workers should continue to go to work?

How does that change your predictions?

So in this particular this short period of time, when you know we've we've kind of committed to doing some really stringent interventions, we we just need the best possible adherents, and we appreciate that some easier for some people than it is for others.

But well, if we do it really well over the next 2 to 3 weeks, we'll have a much better idea of what we can do after that.

So from that point of view right now, as much as people are able, we just need them to do it to the very best of their ability.

I mean, we had a intensive care doctor on last night who was saying, You know, people who were not doing essential work, I've got to stay at home.

Is that correct or not?

Yes.

If an intensive, it's the intensive care doctor that's going to have to deal with people who are very severely l on needs the most resource is available to him.

Oh ho, when they do that, so I would definitely concur with I would agree with his opinion.

So how do you see this epidemic developing now in Britain?