UK must ramp up coronavirus efforts to avoid second wave, scientists warn
Britain must ramp up its capacity to spot and contain coronavirus outbreaks if it is to avoid a potentially devastating second wave of infections this winter, senior scientists have warned.
The next two months are “critical” for building a more effective test-andtrace system and ensuring that local outbreak teams are ready to handle the resurgence of infections that is feared as temperatures fall, the experts told the Lords science committee.
Even so, the country should prepare for a cultural shift where wearing masks becomes the norm if people have colds and handshakes are “probably out forever” according to one of the scientists.
As part of the country’s winter preparations, the public should be urged to suppress the virus as much as possible over the summer by keeping to social distancing rules, wearing face masks when required, and maintaining hand hygiene, they said.
“No matter how successful countries have been at suppressing the virus, the moment restrictions are released, there is always a resurgence,” said Prof Venki Ramakrishnan, president of the Royal Society. “It’s not inevitable that we will have a huge wave in the winter, but it will happen if we are complacent and stop being vigilant.”
Ramakrishnan called for “very strong messaging” on the continued need to reduce the spread of the virus and urged ministers to adopt a goal of slashing prevalence to one case per million in the population.
The latest figures released by the Office of National Statistics suggest an estimated 24,000 people in England had the virus in the week up to 12 July, with around 1,700 new infections
per day. “All the public health measures we’ve introduced now, including the use of face masks, should be maintained through the winter,” Ramakrishnan told the committee.
Professor Anne Johnson at the Academy of Medical Sciences said it was “absolutely critical” to reduce transmission in health and social care settings which are responsible for a substantial portion of the epidemic. The number of people with symptoms similar to Covid-19 could triple in the winter as the flu and other respiratory infections circulate, Johnson warned, adding that “granular, real-time surveillance” was needed to identify coronavirus outbreaks swiftly.
Prof Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said government’s “top priority” must be to make care homes, hospitals and the wider health system “absolute safe places”. More than 540 healthcare workers have already died from Covid-19 in England and Wales and more than 21,000 care home residents have succumbed to the virus.
Asked whether Britain can expect a second wave of infections in the winter, Piot said: “There is no doubt there will be further outbreaks. Whether it will be a second wave, a tsunami or not, depends on how well we are doing.”
He told the peers that Britain needed to invest now in local surveillance, local decision making and local response capacity so that outbreaks were detected early and acted on fast. But in the long term, the country needed a cultural shift, with face masks becoming the norm when people have common colds. “Shaking hands is probably out forever,” he added.
While hospital and care home testing is largely performed by NHS and Public Health England laboratories, tests in the community are carried out at the new Lighthouse laboratories that were set up as part of the health secretary, Matt Hancock’s, effort to massively expand testing capability. The labs commandeered PCR machines used to test for the virus from research laboratories that could have joined the testing effort themselves.
Prof Paul Nurse, director of the Francis Crick Institute in London, told the committee that private and public laboratories were desperate to help the testing effort but had been “ignored”. He said a small proportion of tests sent to lighthouse labs appeared to be returned within 24 hours, while everyone who worked at the Crick had regular tests and received a result in nine hours. “We have two months to get it right for the winter, let’s use it properly,” he said.