Hello! Welcome to my daily look at coronavirus stats.

Today, a focus on the UK. This afternoon Boris Johnson will give us his decision on whether to lift the lockdown.

So let's look at the variables Boris has to consider, to see if we can guess what the decision is.

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These are the 5 tests Boris said would have to be met in order to lift the lockdown:

1. NHS must have capacity.
2. Sustained fall in deaths.
3. Infection at "manageable levels".
4. Tests and PPE able to meet demand.
5. No risk of second peak.

So, are they met?

Total cases: Still progressing upward in a linear fashion. When a pandemic ends this line should become flat. It isn't.

Daily new cases: This chart has become somewhat misleading because it doesn't tell you about the amount of testing going on. At the beginning, the government was only testing about 20,000 a day. Now, it's 100,000 or so.

The reason that new cases aren't declining is because new testing is finding more cases. The fact that the curve is flat is a good sign here — there are fewer cases as a % of tests. You can see the new tests here:

This is the same "new cases" data but broken out between NHS testing and "new" non-NHS testing. The decline in blue NHS tests gives us an idea of how the proportion of positive tests declines as the number of tests grows.

Active cases: Not yet peaked. In fact there is no sign that this metric is slowing down.

Spain, Italy and Germany only unlocked *after* this line began declining.

Total deaths are slowing down. That's a good sign. The virus is becoming less efficient at killing us.

Daily deaths: As you can see, new deaths are in solid decline (346 per day right now). That is a very good sign. It suggests that if deaths fell to near zero per day, we could all live with COVID the same way we live with flu. But ...

... Note that Boris is holding his speech on a Sunday. The new deaths chart shows the lowest numbers are on weekends and Mondays. He has chosen a day when he knows he will get a low score.

The numbers will pop up again in midweek when unrecorded weekend deaths are added back.

On the ground: UK remains mostly locked down except for car use, which has doubled since the lockdown began.

Car use is at about 50% of normal. The lockdown is fraying. Half of all car drivers aren't really locked down.

Most hospital regions are treating fewer than 2,000 COVID cases.

Fewer than 30% of critical care beds are occupied by COVID patients.

Bottom line: The disease is still spreading, but spreading more slowly. It is becoming less lethal, perhaps because the most vulnerable have already died. The hospitals are no longer overwhelmed.

At least the first 4 of the 5 tests have been met.

The open question is No.5, the risk of a second peak.

Conclusion: As the active cases curve and new daily cases charts show, there is still a lot of COVID out there. And 346 deaths per day is a lot of deaths. Expect the lockdown to continue ... but also, when deaths go below 200, expect pressure for it to be ended.