Second wave has already arrived – Johnson
PRIME MINISTER Boris Johnson yesterday warned that a second wave of coronavirus has arrived in the UK, as scientists reported the “widespread growth” of the virus.
The Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) said the R number – representing the number of people an infected person will pass the virus to – has risen to between 1.1 and 1.4 for the UK as a whole, meaning cases could rise very quickly.
“There’s no question, as I’ve said for several weeks now, that we could expect (and) are now seeing a second wave coming in,” Mr Johnson told reporters during a visit to the Vaccines Manufacturing Innovation Centre construction site near Oxford.
“We are seeing it in France, in Spain, across Europe – it has been absolutely, I’m afraid, inevitable we were going to see it in this country.”
Public Health England (PHE) warned that data published yesterday could be a sign of “far worse things to come”, as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said cases are thought to have almost doubled in a week to 6,000-a-day in England.
Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open
University, described the latest R figure as “undoubtedly concerning”.
He said: “Even at growth rates within the estimated range, the number of new cases could grow to high levels quickly if the interventions are not sufficiently effective.”
Advice from Sage goes to all four governments in the UK but any decision on a national lockdown in Wales would be up to First Minister Mark Drakeford.
For England, the Prime Minister insisted he did not want a second national lockdown, but said it was essential that people followed social distancing guidelines – including the new “rule of six”.
“As we look at this particular curve and what is happening now, clearly we are going to keep everything under review. I don’t want to get into a second national lockdown at all, it is the last thing anybody wants,” he said.
“I don’t want to go into bigger lockdown measures at all, we want to keep schools open and it is fantastic the schools have gone back in the way they have. We want to keep the economy open as far as we possibly can, we want to keep businesses going.
“The only way we can do that is obviously if people follow the guidance.”
Ministers in England are thought to be considering a two-week national “circuit break”, an attempt to break the chain of transmission.
Earlier, however, Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock stressed the focus remained on local interventions, as he announced new restrictions for large parts of England’s North West, West Yorkshire and the Midlands.
He pointed to a worrying rise in
cases, with Merseyside, Warrington, Halton and Lancashire – excluding Blackpool and Greater Manchester – escalated to “areas of intervention”.
Overall, around 13.5 million people are currently living under restrictions or will be from Tuesday.
Yesterday, new confirmed daily cases of coronavirus in the UK hit 4,322
– the highest since May 8.
Cases of the virus and hospital admissions for Covid-19 are doubling every seven to eight days in the UK, according to the new data.
Globally, confirmed cases of the coronavirus have topped 30 million worldwide, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.