No end in sight until vaccine is finally created
SCIENTISTS advising the Government’s emergency Cobra committee on how the epidemic could play out last night warned there is no end in sight.
Britain is unlikely to return to life as normal for at least a year, they said, and returning to normal would involve a vaccine being developed or another major breakthrough to stop transmission.
Suppressing the outbreak as much as possible will mean herd immunity is unlikely to be reached any time soon. Infection rates will therefore rise again when social distancing measures are relaxed, the team added.
Neil Ferguson, professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London, said the world had been left “in a quandary”.
“We may well be ending up in a really quite different world for at least a year, or more,” he added.
The team at Imperial have been using the latest global data to try to predict how the epidemic will play out. It said stepping up social distancing measures became the only option after new data, showed the NHS could not cope with the number of people likely to become ill if some transmission was allowed to continue.
Modelling of this scenario, in which more relaxed measures were used to slow the spread but not halt it entirely, found it could result in 250,000 deaths and see general and intensive care hospital bed limits exceeded eightfold in the UK.
In comparison, a strategy more in line with the Government’s new plan – which aims to minimise the number of people infected – could cut deaths to 20,000.
Meanwhile, researchers in Australia say drugs to treat malaria and HIV could be used to tackle the coronavirus.
Professor David Paterson, of the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research, said the HIV combination of lopinavir/ritonavir has already been given to Chinese coronavirus patients in Australia, with promising results.
“It’s a potentially effective treatment,” he said.
And in the US, trials are also underway to see if antiviral drug Remdesivir can be used.
It was originally developed to treat Ebola and is seen as a frontrunner in the race to find a cure for Covid-19.