Ashby MP Andrew Bridgen says that the UK economy is now in 'intensive care'.

And he has urged the public to follow Government guidelines and stay at home while restrictions to battle Coronavirus are in place.

The MP for North West Leicestershire tweeted: "A large part of our economy is now effectively under intensive care.

"The fact is that the longer business spends on life support the less likely it is to survive.

"The sooner we control the infections the better.

"Stay at home, save the NHS, save lives."

Mr Bridgen also told Talk Radio this week that those working in hospitals should be the first people to receive Coronavirus tests.

He said: "Isn't better to use those tests on people who are presenting at hospital?

"The aim of the Government's policies is to minimise the spread of the virus.

"In what way is extra testing going to achieve that with the numbers we've got?

"There are around 67million of us. You can work out how long it's going to take to test everybody.

"If we look at frontline NHS workers, that's 1.4million. and another equally important 1.6million working in social care.

"That's 3million with the social carers working with people in the vulnerable age group.

"So even if we did that. Even on German levels, it would take six weeks to test everyone and it takes two days for the results to come out which means that by then, a large proportion of those people who tested negative could be positive.

"A test is only a snapshot. One moment in time when you're tested.

"I put it to you that testing is not going to stop the spread of the virus.

"In Iceland, they randomly tested 5,500 people with 47 per cent positive and half of those had no symptoms. Would it make any difference here?"