London, April 17: The UK government has decided to extend lockdown measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus for another three weeks, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who is currently standing in for Prime Minister Boris Johnson amid his recovery from COVID-19, said on Thursday.

"The advice from SAGE [the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies] is that relaxing any of the measures currently in place would risk damage to both public health and our economy ... But based on this advice, the Government has determined that current measures must remain in place for at least the next 3 weeks," Saab said, as quoted on the government's website. Click here to follow LIVE updates on Coronavirus Outbreak.

The official also named five key conditions for relaxing these measures. which include the ability of the National Health Service to cope with the flow of patients; a sustainable and consistent drop in the daily coronavirus-related death rates; strong evidence that the rate of infection is decreasing to manageable levels; the availability of all necessary resources and sufficient testing capacity; and confidence that the weakening of quarantine measures will not entail a second wave of infection.

So far, the United Kingdom has recorded more than 103,000 cases of the disease, including 13,729 fatalities.

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