The precision instrument hijacked by politicians for crude lockdowns

‘National shutdowns are a crude tool to stop transmission everywhere’

‘It’s a good idea if we can demonstrate the time will be used to plug the gaps in our current response’

The phrase “circuit breaker” is a gift for any pandemic fighting politician. It’s accessible and talks to precision and immediacy. “That dastardly virus. Have no fear, we’ll simply turn it off with a flick of our special circuit breaking switch.”

No wonder Nicola Sturgeon and Arlene Foster have already ordered them up for Scotland and Northern Ireland, and what a gift to Keir Starmer, who says he would pull the magic lever if he were in charge.

But beyond the spin, things are a little more complex. Singapore, South Korea and New Zealand have all successfully used circuit breakers to cut viral transmission chains – yet none of these countries allowed the virus to spread widely in the first place.

Sir Keir Starmer says he is just “following the science”, and it is true that modelling presented to Sage predicts that a two-week circuit breaker – with all householders prevented from mixing and nonessential businesses closed – could reset the pandemic clock back by about a month.

This, it is argued, would buy time – time perhaps to fix NHS Test and Trace, a system that scientists describe not as world beating but as having only a “marginal impact on transmission”.

But the Sage paper is already weeks old. It was shared on Sept 21, when cases were at 4,500 a day. Yesterday saw 19,724 new cases reported.

Prof David Heymann of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a WHO adviser, suggests the phrase “circuit breaker” has been hijacked by politicians who are now using it as a euphemism for lockdown.

“In Asia, a circuit breaker is a precision instrument, not a blunt tool,” he said. “When a transmission event is traced back to its source, a precise, localised shutdown is enforced.” It has worked in Asia because case numbers have been small – dozens rather than the tens of thousands – and because they have well-drilled track and trace teams ready to hunt down cases.

“In Hong Kong, they shut down nightclubs when students came back from China; in South Korea they shut Daegu when the church cluster was identified,” says Prof Heymann. “This contrasts to blunt national shutdowns, which are a crude tool to stop transmission everywhere.”

This is not to say another lockdown would not subdue infections.

Although never enacted, the WHO proposed a “two-weeks-on, twoweeks-off strategy” to curb new cases in Pakistan when they were rapidly rising in June. In Israel, people have been confined to within 1km of their homes since Sept 18, with businesses closed and public gatherings banned. Restrictions planned to last just three weeks are still in place four weeks later. On the other hand, daily infections have been cut in half, giving Israel a chance to gain some control.

Would the same sort of action work in the UK? Almost certainly, yes. The rules of contagion are simple. Stop social mixing and you slow its spread.

The more difficult question is this: does Britain have capacity, collective will and leadership to keep the virus stable even if it can drive cases down?

“It’s a good idea if we can demonstrate the time will be used to plug the gaps in our current response, for instance track and trace,” says Dr Clare Wenham, assistant professor of global health at the London School of Economics. “If not, it’s exactly the same thing as March, just repackaged as a circuit breaker. It buys us time, but it’s not a long-term solution.”