UK ‘faces 50,000 cases a day by mid-october’
We are seeing a rate of increase across the great majority of country, urging public to respect stricter guidelines on social distancing. This is not someone else’s problem. It’s all of our problem, says chief medical officer
England is on track for about 50,000 coronavirus cases a day by mid-october and a surging death toll unless the public gets serious about preventive action, top UK advisors warned on Monday.
Rates of infection in England are replicating the strong resurgence of COVID-19 seen in France and Spain, roughly doubling every seven days, the government’s chief medical officer Chris Whity told a media briefing.
“We are seeing a rate of increase across the great majority of the country,” he said, urging the public to respect stricter guidelines on social distancing.
“This is not someone else’s problem. It’s all of our problem.”
“If this continued along the path...the number of deaths directly from COVID ... will continue to rise, potentially on an exponential curve, that means doubling and doubling and doubling again and you can quickly move from really quite small numbers to really very large numbers,” Whity said.
“If we don’t do enough the virus will take off and at the moment that is the path that we are clearly on and if we do not change course then we’re going to find ourselves in a very difficult problem.”
The briefing previewed an expected announcement by Prime Minister Boris Johnson this week detailing government action to flaten the exponential coronavirus curve heading in to winter, when regular respiratory diseases typically spike.
Johnson last week said Britain was already seeing a second wave of virus, and the government introduced new restrictions for millions of people across northwest, northern and central England.
People in England who refuse to self-isolate to stop the spread of coronavirus could face fines of up to £10,000 ($13,000, 11,000 euros) under tough new regulations announced on Saturday.
Johnson said that from Sept.28, people will be legally obliged to self-isolate if they test positive or are told to by the National Health Service (NHS) tracing programme.
Whity said it was essential for the public to play its part in preventing the NHS being overwhelmed in the colder months.
“We are in a bad sense literally turning a corner, although only relatively recently. At this point the seasons are against us,” he said at the briefing, alongside the government’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance.
Vallance said that on current trends, the daily count of cases will reach about 50,000 on October 13, and a month later exceed 200 deaths every day.
Almost 42,000 people who have tested positive for virus have died in Britain, the worst death toll from the pandemic in Europe.
Ater a summer lull, cases have been rising rapidly to more than 3,000 daily.
Whity said “science in due course will ride to our rescue” with a successful vaccine but over the next six months, “if we don’t change course, the virus will take off.”
Johnson was on Monday pondering a second national lockdown as an accelerating coronavirus outbreak threatened to destroy any shoots of economic recovery and send millions back into isolation.
The United Kingdom already has the biggest official COVID-19 death toll in Europe — and the fith largest in the world — while it is borrowing record amounts in an atempt to pump emergency money through the damaged economy.
But new COVID-19 cases are rising by at least 6,000 per day in Britain, according to week-old data, hospital admissions are doubling every eight days, and the testing system is buckling.
“The trend in the UK is heading in the wrong direction and we are at a critical point in the pandemic,” said Chris Whity.
“We are looking at the data to see how to manage the spread of the virus ahead of a very challenging winter period,” Whity will say alongside Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the United Kingdom was at a critical juncture though any new lockdown would have to be balanced with schools and businesses allowed to stay open so that the country could pay for the crisis.
“We’re certainly at a very critical moment this morning,” Shapps told Sky. “It is clear that we are just a few weeks behind what we’re seeing elsewhere in Europe.”