Experts queue up to warn of third wave risk

SCIENTISTS came out in force yesterday to warn that full unlocking would ‘fan the flames’ of rising Covid infections, heaping pressure on the Prime Minister to delay the easing of lockdown.

Government advisers are uncertain how severe a third wave would be but warned that cases are close to spiralling out of control.

The doubling time of infections of around a week means the country is ‘only three or four times away’ from the overwhelming case numbers seen over winter, many warned.

And even with almost eight in ten adults now having had at least one dose of the jab, experts said it was becoming clear that both doses will be needed to offer the best protection from the Indian/Delta variant. Professor Andrew Hayward, a member of New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), described the 60 per cent increased transmissibility of the variant as ‘extremely worrying’ as it could see infections reach January levels by the end of July.

‘I think it’s clear we will have a substantial third wave of infections, the really big question is how much that wave of infections is going to translate into hospitalisations,’ he told BBC1’ s The Andrew Marr Show. He said ministers should not ‘put their foot on the accelerator’ but ‘slow down.’ This will give more time to get people double vaccinated, he said, with figures showing 55.6 per cent of adults have had their second dose.

Public Health England data showed the number of confirmed cases of the strain has increased in a week from 12,431 to 42,323, with it now accounting for 90 per cent of all Covid cases. It came as the UK recorded another 7,490 daily Covid cases and eight more deaths, slightly down on the previous day’s 7,738 and 12 deaths.

Professor Stephen Reicher, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on

behaviours (Spi-b), which advises the Government, said he expected the Prime Minister to announce an extension of restrictions. He said officials should be wary of ‘going backwards’ as cases continued to increase. He said: ‘We don’t know how many people are going to get seriously ill. there’s still a lot of damage that can be done, therefore it makes good sense to pause.’

Hospital leaders have expressed worries rises in cases will have a knock-on effect to the 5.1 million people on waiting lists. Dr raghib Ali, senior clinical research associate at the university of Cambridge’s MrC epidemiology unit, said waiting times had already seen a rise in patients attending A& e because of the backlog of patients that didn’t come in during the previous waves. He told Sky News: ‘I expect the Prime Minister to say that unfortunately a delay is needed to make sure that we don’t get to the situation again where the NHS is unable to provide care to all its patients.’

Independent SAGe’s Anthony Costello, of university College London, told the Mirror that cases could reach 100,000 a day in a month and warned the NHS will be overloaded if ‘the Government takes a gamble’.