Hospital admissions are set to rise as the UK battles the coronavirus epidemic but experts have said the lockdown is starting to have an effect.
The Chief Scientific Officer Sir Patrick Vallance said the number of people being hospitalised would continue to increase by roughly the same amount for the next two or three weeks.
But he said that the rise in cases was not accelerating because of the social distancing measures.
Sir Patrick said the NHS seeing an additional 1,000 patients a day with coronavirus-related admissions was "not an acceleration" and that the health service was coping.
He said that the numbers admitted is going up by a steady rate of around 1,000 a day - although that could increase.
At the daily Downing Street press conference, he said: "To answer the question about numbers, 6,000 to 9,000, roughly a 1,000-a-day going up in that measure - that's not an acceleration. That's quite important.
"It tells you that actually this is a bit more stable than it has been.
"I do expect that number to continue. I expect people coming every day to be about that, it may go up a little bit.
"And in two or three weeks you would expect that to stabilise and to start to go down a bit."
He warned: "You can't promise that every ICU won't breach its number, that happens in some places during the winter...but that is what we are aiming for."
But Sir Patrick said the behaviour changes since the lockdown began were "successful" and said the reduction in people using bus, trains and the London tube was "dramatic".
He added: "This is important because it will help reduce the number of cases.
There has been an increase in the number of cases through from March to today, but we expect that the steps in place will reduce the number of cases transmitted in the community. "
He warned that is wasn't important to pay "too much attention to the day-to-day changes" and that the desired effect was flattening the curve.
"The message stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives is true everywhere in the UK," he added.
"We expect the [hospitalisations] to get worse over the next couple of weeks because there is lag phase - probably over the next two to three weeks".
Dominic Raab also announced the government will charter flights to ensure that thousands of Brits stuck abroad will get home.
An eye-watering £75million will be spent on the flight to rescue the many UK tourists stuck overseas, the Foreign Secretary announced today.
The effort will only run in counties where commercial flights are not currently operating.
Partner airlines include British Airways, Virgin, EasyJet, Jet2 and others.
Where commercial routes remain an option the airlines will be asked to offer flights at little or no cost.
Mr Raab said traveller should "not delay" and book themselves home at the first available opportunity.
But where that is not an option the government will run special charter flights which Brits will pay for directly through a dedicated travel management company.
Mr Raab said the government had dedicated £75m to support the flights and airlines in order to keep costs down.
He said that the elderly and most vulnerable would be prioritised.
It is the greatest global challenge in a generation and as countries work to secure their borders and stop the further spread of this deadly virus.
"We appreciate that an unprecedented number of UK travellersare trying to get home and we're not talking a few hundred or even a few thousand, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of peope travelling aroud the world."
Mr Raab said his team had been walking "around the clock".
He said: "We've already helped hundreds of thousands of Brits get home".
He said they had helped 150,000 people to get home from Spain, 8,000 from Morocco and around 5,000 from Cyprus.
Since the outbreak of coronavirus in Wuhan, the Foreign Office has helped to bring home almost 1,400 people on specially chartered Government flights from China and Peru and 1,900 people on cruise ships from places including California, Brazil and Japan.
In the last week, the Foreign Office has helped more than 4,000 people to get back from Jamaica.
Around 5,000 Britons successfully left Bali after the British team in Indonesia worked with their counterparts to unblock a visa permissions issue.
He said: "We've not faced challenges like this and getting people home from abroad on this scale in recent memory."
