Young people warned not to be complacent in face of Covid-19 risk

THE Government’s top scientific advisers have warned young people not to be complacent over Covid-19 as they urged the public to keep up social distancing measures to protect themselves.

England’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty said the vast majority of people in all age groups would recover, but it was a mistake for young people who are healthy to think they would all just “breeze through” the pandemic.

He spoke before latest figures revealed a further 29 people who tested positive had died in England, taking the UK total to 137.

The Department of Health and Social Care announced that £2.9bn from its emergency Covid-19 fund would be released to help care for the elderly and free up thousands of hospital beds for the most urgent cases.

The Government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance said everyone must now follow the advice for social distancing, and socialising in pubs and clubs must stop.

Prof Whitty told reporters at a central London press conference: “It is clear that children get this disease much less strongly than adults, I think the data on that is pretty strong now, and it certainly is the case that the majority of those that end up dying sadly are people who tend to be either in the later part of their lives, usually quite elderly, or those with

pre-existing health conditions. But there are also some young people who have ended up in intensive care or who have ended up with severe disease around the world.

“I think it’s important that we don’t give the impression

that every single person who is young and healthy is just going to breeze through this.”

Prof Whitty continued: “It’s important we’re clear in not trying to say ‘really, really worry’, but we also need to be clear in saying this is not a trivial infection for everybody, even if they are a young adult.”

Prof Whitty said that in the long-term a vaccine was likely and, over time, science would come up with longer-term solutions as to how the virus could be managed.

He said people could die directly and indirectly during an epidemic as he stressed it was important to keep the strain on the health service as low as possible.

“They die directly of the infection, unavoidably, best medical care, sadly this is still going to happen for some people,” he said.

“But also they can die because the health service they are in is overwhelmed and therefore there’s an indirect death because there’s a difference between what could happen with health and what we were able to provide in this situation.”