Time to prepare for 2nd wave as death toll rises by just 16

JUST 16 coronavirus deaths were announced in the UK yesterday – with experts saying now is the ideal time to prepare for any future waves of the virus.

The daily toll was the second lowest since mid-March and pushed the overall number of deaths in the UK to 44,236.

Only 352 more cases of the virus were confirmed through testing.

Anne Johnson, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at University College London, said: “Now that we’ve got relatively limited transmission, this is a really important time for us to prepare.

“We’ve got a window of opportunity to get everything in place and to try to be ready for winter and any other future waves of Covid-19.

“We think this is a very important setting to focus on.”

Hospitals in London, North-West and South-West England reported no new deaths yesterday.

It was also the first time there were no deaths in the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales

‘We’ve got a window to get everything in place and be ready’

and Northern Ireland. In Scotland no Covid-19 deaths have been reported in the last 48 hours, said First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

The deaths reported in England yesterday were people aged 42 to 93, who all had underlying health conditions.

The data comes as a study suggests at least one in 10 hospital in-patients with coronavirus at the peak of the epidemic was infected during their stay.

Experts convened by the Royal Society estimated that one per cent of all infections in England between late April and early June was acquired in hospital.

This accounted for 10 per cent of hospital patient cases during the period.

The figure was calculated by looking for patients who developed symptoms at least 14 days after being admitted to hospital, suggesting they picked up the virus there.

When suspected cases of hospital transmission – patients who developed symptoms at least seven days into their stay – were included, the peak proportion was around 15 per cent. Meanwhile, one in ten people infected across the country was a health or social care worker who dealt directly with patients or care home residents.

Such staff were four times more likely to catch the virus than other members of the public, said the Data Evaluation and Learning for Viral Epidemics (Delve) group.

Some six per cent of all Covid-19 infections were among care home residents.

The researchers warned that further action is needed to tackle the spread of coronavirus in hospitals and better identify sources of infection when outbreaks occur.

They called for hospital transmissions to be traced back to their source, in the way the NHS successfully stamped out outbreaks of the superbug MRSA.

Separate modelling by Public Health England (PHE) in May suggested almost 90 per cent of healthcare staff who caught coronavirus may have picked it up in hospital.

The PHE study concluded that placing suspected Covid-19 patients in single rooms or bays has the potential to reduce hospital-acquired infections in patients by up to 80 per cent.

It said regular testing of healthcare workers would also “considerably reduce infection” among them, by as much as 64 per cent, and would result in only a small proportion of staff absence.

Another study from a major London teaching hospital found that 15 per cent of in-patients with Covid-19 from March 2 to April 12 had a hospital-acquired coronavirus infection.

Factors that can allow infections to spread include inadequate protective equipment (PPE) and hand washing, a lack of testing, and failure to keep infected patients separate from others.

Prof Johnson, who is also vicepresident of the Academy of Medical Sciences, said there was an early issue, too, with not understanding that some people who had the bug exhibited no symptoms.

She said: “In the beginning, we really didn’t understand the extent of the asymptomatic issue... and the difficulties of staff social distancing.

“They were aware they were using PPE, once it got going, in these very acute settings.

“But because there was less recognition of infection that was in other parts of the hospital, then of course there was transmission going on in those environments.”

The Delve report drew on a range of data, including the Office for National Statistics’ survey looking at infections in the community in England, and the Vivaldi study, which assessed rates of infection in care homes.

The findings apply to April 26 to June 7. Trends may have varied at other stages of the epidemic.

Nigel Field, chair of the Delve and an expert in epidemiology at University College London, said: “We need better systems in place to understand how Covid-19 is spreading and greater co-ordination of our efforts to control hospital-acquired infections and protect patients, staff and their families.”