We can ease restrictions sooner, says specialist

Doctor says that a study in New York is suggesting that lockdowns appear to be ‘of limited use’

A LEADING British doctor has said a study showing more than half of coronavirus patients in hospital had been staying at home suggests the UK should relax its lockdown more quickly.

Prof Karol Sikora, a cancer specialist, said the New York study appeared to show that while it was important to protect the elderly, sick and vulnerable, many people could be allowed to return to their normal routines.

The survey of 1,269 patients admitted to 113 hospitals over three recent days is the first such look at those becoming seriously ill despite six weeks of lockdown. It found most people hospitalised with the virus in the state of New York were non-essential workers staying at home. It raised questions over the effectiveness of any lockdown and for how long it would be necessary.

Of those surveyed, two thirds of sufferers were staying at home and one in five had come from nursing homes, suggesting they either became infected by going out for shopping, or from seeing people outside of work.

Retirees accounted for a third of people hospitalised. Half of those surveyed were unemployed and only a fifth were still working.

Of all the recent hospitalisations, three quarters were over the age of 51, with the worst affected group aged 61 to 70. Crucially, almost all – 96 per cent – had underlying conditions. Prof Sikora, Dean of the University of Buckingham’s medical school, told The Sunday Telegraph the study appeared to show lockdowns were “of limited use”.

He said: “It is fascinating that it doesn’t seem to matter if you’re locked down or not. These people were locked down, but had a high rate of admission.

“Lockdown is only of limited use. The risk factors for Covid are age, illness and ethnicity. These have more impact on what you’re going to get and if you’re going to be hospitalised than if you are out and about as normal.

“Covid is targeting obese people and people with lung conditions. If we shelter those who are vulnerable and ill, we can get more people back to normal.”

Prof Sikora, medical director of Rutherford Health, added: “Our 200 staff come to work as normal and have been out on public transport, but none has been hospitalised, though some have contracted coronavirus and self-isolated for 14 days. We have to look at what is happening in the UK. Street cleaners are working, bin men are collecting. Though most shops are shut, workplaces are open and there’s no evidence here of what we saw in New York, with its dramatic infection rates.”

In New York, Andrew Cuomo, the state governor, said while the study suggested new infections were being caused by “personal behaviour” and not the lockdown, the order to stay at home had generally thwarted the virus.

He said: “The numbers in the rest of the nation are going up. To me that vindicates what we are doing here.”

New York has dramatically decreased infection and death counts following eight weeks of a total shutdown. The city is about to begin a slow easing of restrictions, but that could still take weeks, if not months.

However, some New York doctors believe the city should reopen without delay. Dr Samir Farhat, who runs the emergency room at New York Community Hospital, the seat of the coronavirus outbreak in the US, said: “It’s not often I agree with Trump, but I think that we should open up on May 15.

“Hospital census is right down, admissions are, too. Opening up now is a calculated risk we need to take.”

Dr Farhat worries that as a consequence of the stay-home strategy, he has not seen the cases of severe asthma, heart attacks and strokes that usually fill his emergency room beds.

The lockdown has also decimated the economy, a factor doctors said could affect both physical and mental health and should not be downplayed.

Dr Daniel Murphy, chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at St Barnabas Hospital in The Bronx, said “inordinate fear” has guided the public response. “While Covid-19 is serious, fear of it is being over-amplified. The public needs to understand the majority of infected people do quite well.

“The community I serve is poor. Most work in ‘essential’ low-paid jobs where distancing isn’t easy. Nevertheless, the wave passed over us, peaked and subsided. This tells me the ebb and flow had more to do with the natural course of the outbreak than it did with the lockdown.”

Virologists and other health experts, however, fear a second wave that could force states to clamp back down.

Whether or not a lockdown remains, doctors stressed it was not simply a matter of reopening overnight.

“Life has to change. We don’t just spring back to normal,” Dr Farhat said.

“We need to wear masks as a habit, scale up testing, and really consider whether we need to travel.

“We cannot just wait for a vaccine that may not come. We just have to figure out a way to live with this.”