GLIMMER OF HOPE AS SPREAD SHOWS SIGNS OF SLOWING
LOCKDOWN measures appear to be slowing the spread of coronavirus, the Government’s chief scientific adviser said yesterday.
Sir PatrickVallance said transport data showed a dramatic reduction in people travelling, which should significantly reduce transmission.
Although hospital admissions for Covid-19 are still increasing, the rate at which they are rising has remained steady rather than accelerating.
Sir Patrick said: “The measures that are in place, they are making a difference.”
The hopeful news came as the UK death toll rose to 1,415 yesterday and it emerged that 9,000 patients are currently in hospital with the virus.
The 159 latest victims in England were aged between 32 and 98 and all but four had underlying health conditions. Sir Patrick said that hospital admissions data suggested social distancing was already having an effect.
“We expect that measures that are in place that cause that social distancing – the stay at home message – will be reducing the number of cases of transmission in the community and decreasing the number of cases overall.
“We would expect this, in turn, to decrease the number of people needing admission to hospital.
“The number of hospital admissions has gone up roughly the same amount each day, suggesting that we’re not on a fast acceleration at the moment.”
Sir Patrick said hospital admissions were rising by around 1,000 a day and this is likely to continue for the next couple of weeks due to the time between people getting the virus and ending up in hospital.
It is hoped figures will then stabilise, before falling.
He added that half the cases were in London but a similar increase in admissions across the country showed everyone needs to obey the order to stay at home.
The UK is on roughly the same path as France, but “behind Italy in terms of the curve”, he said.
Sir Patrick’s assessment was echoed yesterday by Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London. The expert on infectious diseases, whose modelling has been key to Government policy on social distancing, said: “We can see some early signs of slowing in some indicators – less so deaths because deaths are lagged by a long time from measures coming into force.”
He said the effect was not “some sort of God-given deterministic phenomena” but a direct result of the UK’s unprecedented lockdown.
However, it has not yet translated to a reduction in deaths as those patients dying now were likely infected before the measures were introduced.
He told Radio 4’s Today programme: “Death is a reliable outcome but it’s delayed by two or three weeks from what’s actually really happening in transmission.”
Prof Ferguson said Britain was still missing critical data on the true numbers infected.
But figures from other countries suggests up to 40 per cent of people who contract the virus may not have any symptoms.
He added that almost two million Britons may now be infected.
“In central London, it could be as many as three to five per cent of the population has been infected, maybe more in hotspots,” he said.
“In the country as a whole, maybe two or three per cent.”
Meanwhile, scientists continue to work around the clock in pursuit of a vaccine or effective treatment.
US pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson yesterday announced that it will start human trials of a promising vaccine by September, with the aim of having it available for emergency use by early 2021.