Action just one week earlier ‘could have cut deaths in half ’
THE number of deaths from coronavirus could have been halved if lockdown had been introduced a week earlier, an expert who advised the Government on restrictions has said.
Neil Ferguson, professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London, told a Westminster committee thousands of deaths could have been prevented with earlier action.
However, he explained that based on what was known about transmission at the time, the actions taken were appropriate.
Prof Ferguson said: “The epidemic was doubling every three to four days before lockdown interventions were introduced.
“Had we introduced lockdown measures a week earlier, we would have reduced the final death toll by at least a half.
“Whilst I think the measures, given what we knew about this virus then in terms of its transmission and fatality, were warranted, certainly had we introduced them earlier we would have seen many fewer deaths.”
The UK was put into lockdown on March 23 in an unprecedented step to attempt to limit the spread of coronavirus.
Early in the outbreak, experts estimated that the number of deaths in the UK would be unlikely to exceed 20,000.
When asked what had gone wrong, Prof Ferguson said: “I think two things. One is a paper actually out in Nature (a scientific journal), which highlights that around about that time, just before lockdown happened, the first two weeks of March, we probably had 1,500 to 2,000 infections imported from Italy and Spain, which we just hadn’t seen in the surveillance data until that point.
“So, there was much heavier seeding than we’d expected.
“The key things to determine the number of deaths is at what point in your local epidemic you trigger interventions — how far in are you when you shut down transmission?
“And we frankly had underestimated how far into the epidemic this country was. That’s half the reason.
“The second part, which I think would have been more avoidable, is about half of those deaths occurred in care homes.”
Prof Ferguson continued: “We did all this working under the assumption, which was the Government’s policy at the time, that care homes would be shielded from infection.
“We also made a rather optimistic assumption that somehow, which was policy, that the elderly would be shielded, the most vulnerable would be shielded as the top priority. And that simply failed to happen.”
Prof Ferguson, whose research helped usher in the lockdown, resigned from his role as a key adviser to the Government after admitting that he had undermined social distancing rules by reportedly meeting a woman at his home.
However, he told the committee he still sits on SPI-M, which advises the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies.
Prof Ferguson told the committee that despite border screening at the early stages of the pandemic, probably 90% of cases imported into the country were missed because checks were not being conducted on people arriving from Europe.
The Imperial College Covid-19 response team called for a fullscale lockdown in a paper on March 16, seven days before it was implemented in the UK.
When asked if he was disappointed in the delay, Prof Ferguson said: “I said earlier, but in retrospect I would have much preferred it to have been taken a week earlier, given that many lives would have been saved.”
Prof Ferguson’s comments were put to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance and Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty at the daily Downing Street press conference.
Sir Patrick said it would be important to look back and see which measures had been most effective and would be useful in determining which measures to implement in the future, if necessary.
He added: “I think those are important scientific questions to address... they haven’t yet been fully addressed.”
Prof Whitty said it was important to learn lessons from what had happened in the outbreak.