Lockdown cannot go on for much longer, says government adviser

BRITAIN needs to be eased out of the coronavirus lockdown in the next three or four weeks, a leading government adviser said, as ministers refused to set a timetable for an exit strategy.

Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust and a World Health Organisation (WHO) expert, said the pandemic was “probably past its peak” in many parts of the UK, with the latest daily death rate of 596 its lowest for a fortnight.

He said that if the circulation of the virus in the community, hospitals and care homes was reduced “dramatically”, then he hoped lockdown could start to be eased “in three, four weeks’ time because it is clear that [it] can’t go on for much longer”.

“The lockdown is damaging business and ultimately that is damaging all of our lives,” he said. “The damage it’s doing to all of our health, our wellbeing, our mental health, disproportionately affects the most vulnerable and the least able to cope with it in society. That’s a really big issue of inequality.”

However, he warned there would be further waves of the virus, and that to relax the lockdown too early could see the disease rebound “within a few weeks or a couple of months”.

It emerged yesterday that Boris Johnson has ordered aides to focus on avoiding a “second peak”, while Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, is setting up a new unit to advise senior ministers on the economic and health impacts of the lockdown.

George Eustice, the Environment Secretary, is understood to be working on plans for a “land army” to support farmers in picking crops, which could draw on some of the 700,000 volunteers who supported the NHS.

Ministers are also considering new laws that would make social distancing on public transport compulsory, with British Transport Police given powers to enforce them.

Ministers, meanwhile, refused to set a timetable for any relaxation of the lockdown until data on transmission rates had been analysed in the coming weeks. Mr Gove said: “We have set some tests which need to be passed before we’re easing restrictions.”

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson discounted claims that schools could return by mid-may.

He said: “I want nothing more than to see schools back to normal, but I can’t give you a date.”