55,000 Britons may already be infected, says chief scientist

UP to 55,000 people could already have coronavirus, the Government’s chief scientist warned yesterday.

In a stark admission, Sir Patrick Vallance revealed the true scale was far worse than official figures suggest.

He also claimed keeping the death toll below 22,000 would be a ‘good outcome’, although ‘still horrible.’

Yesterday the latest Government figures revealed that 71 patients had died, an increase of 14 in the past 24 hours.

One of the latest victims was just 45 – the youngest known so far. An NHS spokesman confirmed the patient had very serious underlying health conditions.

The number of confirmed cases rose to 1,950 – an increase of 407 in 24 hours.

But Sir Patrick told MPs the true number was probably 28 times higher.

Quizzed by the health and social care select committee whether there were ‘potentially 55,000 cases’ – based on previous modelling – he said: ‘If you put all the modelling information together, that’s a reasonable ballparkway of looking at it. It’s not more accurate than that.’

But on a more optimistic note, he said the number of cases could start to fall within two to three weeks thanks to the Government’s social distancing policies.

He stated this would have a ‘very significant effect on the peak’ and reduce the numbers infected and the deaths.

Disturbing research by Imperial College London scientists on Monday revealed that if the Government had not imposed these measures, up to a quarter of a million would die by this Summer.

Sir Patrick said he hoped the deaths would now fall to below 20,000 this year. To put this in context, approximately 8,000 patients die every year from seasonal flu, rising to 14,000 in very severe years.

Sir Patrick said: ‘If we can get numbers down to 20,000 and below, that’s a good outcome in terms of where we would hope to get to with this outbreak.

‘But that’s still horrible, it’s still an enormous number of deaths and an enormous pressure on the health service, and having spent 20 years as an NHS consultant as well as an academic, I know what that looks and feels like.’

He said it was not yet clear on how long the social distancing measures would need to stay in place and what would happen when they were lifted.

Asked whether the virus would come back once people started going about daily routines again, he said: ‘That’s one of the big unknowns which we are going to have to think about very carefully.’

‘It’s difficult to get a very good handle on that and as we enter the next phase and having made these very significant interventions, it’s going to be really, really important that we can get the good data to monitor the effects.

‘We might need to do more and of course also at some point we will need to back off. We need to be able to monitor what’s the consequence of backing off.’

The NHS has admitted it needs 20,000 more ventilators to cope with the crisis – as engineering firms including JCB, Rolls-Royce and Dyson were recruited in a ‘wartime’ effort to help build machines.

‘That’s one of the big unknowns’