UK unlikely to have sudden lifting of lockdown: chief medical officer

England's chief medical officer said on Wednesday it was unrealistic to expect a sudden lifting of all lockdown restrictions, even as ministers say the United Kingdom has reached the peak of the coronavirus outbreak.

"If people are hoping that it's suddenly going to move from where we are now, in lockdown, suddenly into 'everything's gone', that is a wholly unrealistic expectation," Chris Whitty told reporters. "We're going to have to do a lot of things for really quite a long period of time."