Lifting curbs ‘dangerous’ say experts

MORE than 100 scientists and doctors have signed a letter condemning plans to lift Covid restrictions on July 19 as “a dangerous and unethical experiment”.

Writing in medical journal The Lancet, the group warned that allowing Covid-19 cases to rise dramatically could lead to hundreds of thousands of people being left with long-term illness and disability.

The letter, whose 122 signatories include former UK chief scientific adviser Sir David King and Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of council for the British Medical Association, also warned that the move would create “fertile ground for the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants”.

It concluded: “In light of these grave risks, and given that vaccination offers the prospect of quickly reaching the same goal of population immunity without incurring them, we consider any strategy that tolerates high levels of infection to be both unethical and illogical.

“We believe the Government is embarking on a dangerous and unethical experiment, and we call on it to pause plans to abandon mitigations on

July 19, 2021.”

Dr Deepti Gurdasani, who organised the letter, said: “The Government has made a deliberate choice to expose children to mass infection, rather than protect them in schools or vaccinate them. This is unethical and unacceptable.”