Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham will be joined remotely by Baroness Beverley Hughes, Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, to discuss the latest on Greater Manchester’s response to the impact of the current coronavirus outbreak.

Also joining today’s remote press conference will be Chief Constable Ian Hopkins of Greater Manchester Police.

Andy Burnham says that he welcomes the fall in cases but the moves by the Government came too early when asked whether it was a case of balancing risk and getting the economy moving again.

Health takes precedence at this moment-There is still a high number of people in hospital and there are still cases in care homes

There are only a small amount of people left at Manchester’s Nightingale Centre and there is currently a debate about how best to use it in the future but there are definitely no plans for it to be reverted to its former use

We are not yet in a position of data sharing protocols between a national and a regional level says Andy Burnham-He says that there appears to be a logjam in the situation.There is a lot of frustration about testing level information not being passed down locally

Deputy Mayor Beverley Hughes has major concerns about the return of schools policy-Her concerns include testing, that primary school children rely on interaction in their education and the complexities around who would be in the teachers social bubble

Andy Burnham believes that the region has more cases in hospital than in other regions and he blames this on deprivation and the density of population-Again he reiterates that the Government’s decision to relax lockdown is based on the picture in London and the South East

Andy Burnham reiterates that he is not calling for regional differences in coming out of the lockdown-He takes the few that if it is not safe in one place it is not safe anywhere and again he says that he is asking for the Government for the regional data-He is not convinced that countrywide it is not safe.

Deputy Mayor Beverley Hughes says she was concerned about what would happen over the last weekend after the Prime Minister’s message on relaxing restrictions.

There is, she says, a lot of misunderstanding over the new message and many people are worried about it.The basis for police to ask questions on people’s movement is very limited now-They can only intervene over gatherings

Andy Burnham is now giving an update-There are encouraging signs, cases are becoming fewer, the overall number of cases was 527 and 105 deaths across the ten Boroughs.

Hospital admissions was 28 for yesterday, up slightly from last week.338 care homes have experienced an outbreak, one third are currently reporting an outbreak.

There are 91 people in ICU, down from 160 last week.

Andy has called on the Government to publish the R number for the regions-He says it is 0.70-0.76

We are in a difficult position he says with people being advised to return to work without being given the means to transport them

Chief Constable Hopkins says that the Houseparty issue has not gone away and was a particular problem last weekend.He reminded everybody that police do not have the powers to enter premises.

The Chief Constable is asked about the resumption of the Premier League.”We are in difficult times and the thought of people coming together not keeping social distancing.Liverpool coming to Manchester City will undoubtedly bring crowds whether it is played behind closed doors or not.

The Mayor says that the issues surrounding television and money should not influence the return of the game.

The Chief Constable has reiterated that they have no powers to police the two metre rule and is simply guidance.On domestic abuse there has been a small increase under lockdown.

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