Lockdown can’t work on its own

ANNE Mccloskey (Write Back, December 22) suggests that the best way to “protect the NHS” is to invest in it, not impose lockdowns. But both are needed.

She references “20 published peer-reviewed research papers showing that lockdowns are ineffective at reducing mortality and even cases of Covid.”

These studies do not mean that lockdown does not reduce cases and deaths per week; it does, we can see that in the raw data from the Department of Health dashboard, which shows the immediate effectiveness of lockdowns on reducing the hospitalisation rate and death rate.

However, as the WHO and just about everybody else agrees, in the long run, lockdowns work only if we either have a vaccine, or we have an effective trace-and-isolate system, as in Australia, where the virus is controlled at extremely low levels and lockdown is removed with very few deaths and hospitalisations. We have failed at this and must learn.

Those who succeeded remain in a precarious state where the virus could flare up if they do not maintain rigorous infection control as they are doing. Only a vaccine will give stable protection against the spread of new cases.

The UK is now in a race between vaccinating the vulnerable and the spread of the virus.

Lockdowns slow the spread and so help in this race to keep the overall mortality of the outbreak to a minimum.

If we had no vaccine and failed at quarantine, then lockdowns only delay the inevitable and cumulative mortality and case numbers will be the same as with no lockdown.

They only spread the cases over a longer time and so prevent overwhelming hospital capacity along the way.

DR NICK CANNING Coleraine, Co Londonderry