Experts at sixes and sevens over choice of number

THE number six was picked by officials as a balance between ‘risk’ and ‘normal lives’.

It is seen as a realistic limit for group gatherings that ensures people are not putting themselves at too great a risk of contracting the virus from each other.

Equally, it is a sufficient number to enable Britons to meet up, indoors or outdoors, in a relatively normal fashion. However, some scientists have questioned the rationale for the number.

Professor John Ashton, a former president of the Faculty of Public Health, said: ‘I don’t think they should come out with six as a hard and fast number – it should be a decision made locally, so that areas with low infection rates could have a higher number of people in social gatherings.

‘Central government has chosen the number six, and they are coming across as very authoritarian.’

But many other scientific experts said they backed the Government. Dr Stephen Griffin, of Leeds University’s School of Medicine, called the new rule ‘welcome and timely’, while Professor Keith Neal, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Nottingham, said: ‘Something had to be done. We don’t want to go back to a full lockdown. There is no hard science here.

‘I think the Government is trying to stop the need for further measures through early action. Small changes can have major events.’