Stay-at-home policy has saved 370 British lives, says study

THE week-long lockdown in Britain has saved 370 lives, a study by Imperial College London suggests.

At least 59,000 lives have already been saved in 11 European countries due to the strict new social distancing measures introduced to stem the spread of Covid-19, the modelling says, including 38,000 lives in Italy.

But the study also shows that the Continent remains a long way from developing “herd immunity”, whereby the vast majority of people have caught, recovered from and become immune to coronavirus.

The modelling, published yesterday, analyses the impact of lockdown in 11 European countries, including the UK.

It suggests that as many as 43million people may have been infected with the virus by March 28 with the highest possible “attack rate” – the proportion of a population infected – for Europe as a whole estimated at 11.4 per cent. “Our estimates imply that the populations in Europe are not close to herd immunity,” the authors said. They added that as the lockdowns continue there will be a decrease in transmission rates so “the rate of acquisition of herd immunity will slow down rapidly”.

“This implies that the virus will be able to spread rapidly should interven- tions be lifted,” the researchers warned.

In the UK, the study estimates that just 2.7 per cent of the population (1.6 million people) have been infected, which contrasts with epidemiological modelling from Oxford University that suggests as much as half the UK population may have already been infected.

In the Imperial study, Norway and Germany have the lowest infection rates at 0.41 and 0.7 per cent. Spain has the highest “attack rate” at 15 per cent.

The modelling was published by the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial.

The team also produced the report that suggested 260,000 people would die if the UK produced a “mitigation” strategy alone, triggering the Government’s decision to impose a nationwide lockdown eight days ago.

“This analysis shows that the interventions European countries have put in place have significantly slowed the spread of Covid-19,” said Prof Neil Ferguson, the director of the MRC Centre.

The report analysed real-time data from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK, and determined that the interventions imposed have reduced the reproductive rate of coronavirus by 64 per cent on average.

But the number of lives saved by interventions is dependent on how long the measures have been in place and the size of the epidemic. In Italy, some 38,000 deaths have been averted, while Spain has prevented 16,000 and France 2,500.