When WILL ‘the experts’ face the facts about Covid?

They say the virus is a risk to everyone – but here are the stats that reveal the truth

THE majority of people who are infected with coronavirus will never even know they had it.

Yet so far 130,000 patients in the UK have ended up in hospital with Covid-19 – and more than 52,000 have died.

This staggering disparity in outcomes is what makes it so difficult to settle upon the best course of action. Why should teenagers have to stay at home when their risk of death is vanishingly small?

Since the pandemic was declared, the medical community identified several risk factors for severe Covid-19 – including age, sex and obesity.

Professor Chris Whitty said on Monday: ‘You cannot in an epidemic just take your own risk – unfortunately, you’re taking a risk on behalf of everybody else.

‘If I as an individual increase my risk, I increase the risk to everyone around me… sooner or later the chain will lead to people who are vulnerable or elderly.’

But some experts, such as former Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption and Oxford’s Professor Carl Heneghan, claim that our detailed knowledge of the risk factors, outlined below, make blanket lockdown measures unnecessary.

Instead, they argue for targeted strategies to ‘shield’ the most vulnerable, including those in care homes, while allowing everyone else to get on with their lives.

Ministers currently believe this thinking is flawed because there is no way of segregating society into the ‘at risk’ groups.

These, then, are the extraordinary facts about Covid:

AGE

Around seven in ten people do not get any symptoms.

A 40-year-old is ten times as likely to die as a 20-year-old. An 80year-old faces 1,000 times the risk.

Under-55s are more likely to die in an accident than from Covid-19.

Out of 52,000 deaths in England and Wales since March, more than 22,000 were over-85s. 17,000 were between 75 and 84.

580 people under 44 have died, many of whom had underlying health conditions.

The virus does not appear to kill healthy children.

PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS

More than 95 per cent of patients who die have an underlying health condition – of the 29,705 patients who died in English hospitals, some 28,309 had a pre-existing illness.

One in four UK virus deaths were people with dementia.

45 per cent of Covid death certificates noted heart disease as a condition. One in five noted diabetes or high blood pressure.

OBESITY

Being obese increases the likelihood of dying from Covid-19 by up to 90 per cent, according to Public Health England.

Patients who are morbidly obese – with a BMI over 40 – are four times as likely to be admitted to intensive care as those who are healthy.

Data found that in NHS intensive care units, 8 per cent of critically ill patients with Covid-19 have a BMI over 40, compared to less than three per cent of the general population.

Doctors say that if people are overweight, every kilogram they lose will reduce their risk of hospitalisation and death. Two thirds of adults in England are obese or overweight, with a body mass index (BMI) over 25.

ETHNICITY

In the first wave of the virus, black men in the UK died at three times the rate of white men.

Even after adjusting for age and deprivation, the Office for National Statistics found black men and

women are up to twice as likely to die, and Bangladeshi, Pakistani or Indian men also face a significantly higher risk.

▪ Scientists believe that it is due to a combination of genetic and socio-economic factors, with BAME communities more likely to live in urban areas and have frontline jobs that expose them to a higher risk of the virus.

▪Some ethnic groups are more at risk of conditions such as Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

GENDER

▪It has been clear since the virus first emerged that men are more susceptible to severe illness than women. In the UK around 4,500 more men have died than women. ▪Latest evidence suggests that a man carries around a 70 per cent greater risk of dying than a woman the same age.