And STILL doomsters forecast 400 a day could die in summer

COVID could cause hundreds of deaths a day by August, government scientists claimed yesterday.

Modelling by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies suggested a daily toll of around 400 deaths at the peak of a ‘summer wave’, even with the month-long delay to the ending of virus curbs.

The forecast came despite the success of the vaccine programme and the fact deaths are averaging just nine a day, with ten recorded yesterday.

Graham Medley, who leads SPI-M, the modelling sub-group of SAGE, warned that fatalities could get ‘very high’.

Asked whether hundreds of deaths a day would have resulted from lifting pandemic curbs on June 21, he added: ‘Oh easily. I think we still might at some point.’ Experts have warned that the rapid spread of the Indian variant would lead to ‘another substantial wave of hospital admissions’ potentially higher than the January peak. The surge is expected to continue until early August.

‘Although the numbers of deaths are low at the moment, everyone expects that they will rise,’ said Professor Medley, who is based at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. ‘The question is really as to what level they will rise.’ SAGE published modelling looking at the expected third wave over this summer, but cautioned that there was still ‘huge uncertainty’ over how bad it would be. One paper by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine said that in a ‘central scenario’ daily deaths were likely to reach between 200 and 700 with a five-week delay to unlocking. This compares with between 300 and 900 had June 21 gone ahead.

Experts at Warwick University said deaths were likely to peak at around 400 a day in August.

All the models suggested delaying unlocking would bring the overall third-wave deaths down by around 5,000 and cut numbers admitted to hospital by almost half. The Warwick research said the delay would cut admissions at the peak from 2,850 to 1,420 a day.

Professor Medley said: ‘In the next few weeks, the numbers of deaths [could] be very high. If we didn’t have the vaccines, then we would be back up to many hundreds of deaths a day.

‘The fact they reduce the burden of deaths and hospitalisations so much means that we’re able to survive this step three we’re in.’