Half of Britons may already be infected

Impact could be lower than feared, says Oxford study

AS MUCH as half the British population might already have been infected with a mild dose of coronavirus, according to a controversial study.

If true, many more people are resistant to the disease than the Government’s experts believe – and the impact may be less than feared.

The new model from Oxford University suggests the virus was circulating in the UK by mid- January, around two weeks before the first reported case and a month before the first reported death.

The means it could have had enough time to have spread widely, with many Britons acquiring immunity. Sunetra Gupta, a professor of theoretical epidemiology who led the study, said testing was needed to assess the theory.

‘We need immediately to begin largescale serological surveys – antibody testing – to assess what stage of the epidemic we are in now,’ she said.

The Oxford university research offers a contrasting view on the disease to the study that is informing government policy. It was carried out by experts at Imperial College London.

‘I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,’ Professor Gupta told the Financial Times.

The Imperial study has led to the Government imposing the extraordinary shutdown on the basis that, without such rules, the disease could claim up to 250,000 lives.

Before taking this decision ministers had hoped that a build-up of ‘ herd immunity’ – where swathes of people become resistant to the virus – could play a bigger role in defeating it.

Professor Gupta’s research suggests that there is more herd immunity in the population than had been suspected. Both models suggest that the outbreak will run for around two to three months but the professor’s model is suggesting the impact will be less grave than expected.

She said she still thought it was important to carry out measures such as physical distancing and quarantining to reduce the impact of the disease on the NHS. The idea that a large proportion of the population has been exposed to coronavirus is contradicted by evidence from other countries.

In Germany and South Korea, where widespread testing had been carried out, the number exposed has been low. Experts at the World Health Organisation have advised countries to ‘test, test, test’.

‘Circulating in January’