‘Difficult choices’ ahead over lockdown areas to be eased
the risk of a second wave of coronavirus infections.
Prof Whitty said that there was no “perfect solution” to easing the current lockdown without risking a rise in infections, and that it would come down to “difficult choices” by ministers about what to allow and what not to allow.
He said that it was crucial to keep the reproduction number – the “R” rate – of the virus below one, meaning that each infected person passes the virus on to fewer than one other person on average.
The R value is currently between 0.6 and 0.7, according to experts from Imperial College London, a figure that Prof Whitty said would gave the Government “some room for manoeuvre”.
He revealed that Sage, the Government’s scientific advisory group, would tell ministers later this week how much they believe each option – such as reopening schools – would increase the R value, and it would then be up to politicians to choose their priorities while keeping R below one. He added: “The final decisions will be for ministers and this is not a scientific decision.
“But what we can contribute, from the science side, is to say, ‘Well, we’ve got this room for manoeuvre between where the R is now and [R]1 ... here are some combinations of things we can do’.
“But I really want to be clear about this. There is no perfect solution where we’re going to end up being able to do all the things that people want and at the same time keep R below one.
“So, there are going to have to be some very difficult choices between different things, all of which, ideally all of us would love to open up but we can’t do them all, and therefore, there will have to be some difficult choices.”
Prof Whitty said that one choice would be whether to reopen schools. He also hinted that primary schools could reopen at a different time to secondaries because children of different ages were affected differently by the virus. He said: “It may be different between different bits of schools.
“Is it different, for example, between young children and older children which it may be, but unfortunately we do not yet have direct data that really helps us.”
Prof Whitty added: “We think that the contribution of children at school to the spread of this virus is probably less than for flu ... what we’re trying to work out is if children went back to school, how much closer to R1 would we be?”