Long haul for rest of year, but we’ll manage it
QUESTIONS remain over the UK’s coronavirus strategy. As the pandemic grows, Dr Thomas House, a mathematical epidemiologist at the University of Manchester, and one of the scientists advising the government during the current coronavirus outbreak, has revealed how he sees the crisis developing.
What started the pandemic?
“We don’t know. We have to wait for the genetics and science to come in,” said Dr House.
“The theory about it starting in a lab doesn’t seem terribly likely.
“But the idea it emerged somewhere other than Wuhan and that’s just where it got going in the human population is plausible. We just don’t know where.
“You can do calculations with genetics and try and work it out. The fact we first saw a case in Wuhan doesn’t mean that’s the starting point.”
“It’s a viral pathogen which colonises your respiratory tract and lungs. It’s spread from person to person.
“It’s one of the big challenges that our generation of humans has got to deal with.”
When will lockdown will be lifted? “We have to look at the figures in the coming days.
“We are going to have to come up with strategies for measuring the trade-off between the lockdown and the human cost and the economy. People are already finding it hard just a few weeks in.
“In a week’s time we will have better knowledge of how much of an effect the current lockdown has had. We’ll be able to look at hospital capacity.”
On the daily infection and death toll figures
“The fact they are shooting up doesn’t mean social distancing isn’t working, there’s just a delay.
“It’s the infections we are stopping now that will stop the future deaths.
“It should start to decrease in the next week or two.
“Every year in the UK about 600,000 people die. If we just let the epidemic sweep through we might be thinking about doubling that. If we socially distance and ensure all the people who need treatment get treatment and don’t overwhelm the NHS we can get that down.
“But I think even in the best case scenario, excess deaths will still be in the high tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands this year as a result of coronavirus – and there’s the general disruption it’s caused to medical care.”
The best case scenario
“A vaccine that comes very quickly. Second best is we manage the epidemic well, the NHS doesn’t get overwhelmed, and it spreads in the way coronavirus viruses usually do
“In films the virus always evolves to be more scary, actually evolution works the other way. It tends to make them less deadly.
“We’ve seen very young people are not in as much in danger. If there’s something circulating the whole time, immune system gets better at dealing with it.
“The antibody test will give crucial information on how many people just get a mild cold.
“Humans have been through big pandemics before right through history.
“The worst was 1918. There were a few in the 19th century, three in the 20th century. We were lucky with SARS and Ebola and MERS that they were contained.
“If we don’t get an effective vaccine there are probably going to have to be a lot of infections with this disease.
“Herd immunity shouldn’t have been the main strategy. But we have to manage the acquisition of that while giving as much time as possible.
“Once we get the antibody tests we’ll know more about how close to herd immunity we are.
“I think some people may think just stay home for a few weeks and that’s that – but it’s longer haul than that.
“There will be consequences for the rest of 2020. But we’ll get better at managing social distancing and work out which activities cause the least disruption for most benefit.
“The sort of thing that might change is if we see evidence that it’s not good at spreading outdoors then we might have a policy of people being able to go outdoors.
“There might be less worry about parks, for example. Hopefully, we will get better at managing activities and which ones are safe and which aren’t.
“In terms of some measures like increased hygiene and thinking about being careful with transmission, that’s going to carry on throughout 2020.
“We’ll have to be aware of it for the rest of the year.
“After that it will depend on how long people have immunity.”