‘No evidence of decline’ since lockdown

LONDON: A third pandemic lockdown appears to be having little impact on rates of Covid19 in England, researchers warned yesterday, with prevalence of the disease ‘‘very high’’ and ‘‘no evidence of decline’’ in the first 10 days of renewed restrictions.

Until rates of Covid19 were reduced substantially, health services would ‘‘remain under extreme pressure’’ and the number of deaths would continue to rise rapidly, researchers leading Imperial College London’s REACT1 prevalence study said.

‘‘The number of Covid19 inpatients is extremely high at the moment, and we can’t expect that to drop unless we can achieve lower levels of prevalence,’’ professor of infectious disease dynamics Steven Riley, who coled the work, said.

‘‘The fact that [prevalence] is not going down has potentially serious consequences.’’

Prime Minister Boris Johnson put England into a third national lockdown on January 6, closing bars, restaurants and most schools, and allowing only essential shops to open.

Ministers have appealed to people to stay at home as much as they can to prevent hospitals being overwhelmed and give authorities time to roll out vaccines to the elderly and those at highest risk.

But presenting his latest data — covering January 6 to 15 — Riley said prevalence rates were at 1.58%, the highest recorded by the REACT1 study since it started in May 2020. This is a rise of more than 50% since the last readout in midDecember.

Riley also cautioned against pinning immediate hopes on Covid19 shots.

‘‘The vaccine is only going to have a very limited impact on prevalence in the shortterm,’’ he told reporters.

Paul Elliott, an expert in epidemiology and public health medicine and director of the REACT programme, said the stubborn levels of Covid19 infection might be partly due to a more transmissible variant of the virus which emerged late last year. — Reuters