During the 17th century, drinking tea became fashionable among Britons, who started large-scale production and commercialisation of the plant in India. Combined, China and India supplied 62% of the world's tea in 2016.
The government estimate relies on a global statistic - 6 to 8 percent of the population has rare diseases - the population of 1.3 billion A sudden lockdown like this may have left many without stocks of their hard-to-source medication.