Infection rate below R1 raises hopes that an end is in sight

As health chief hints some restrictions may soon be eased, fears grow over big drop in A&E attendance

THE coronavirus infection rate has fallen low enough to start thinking about lifting some of the lockdown restrictions, the Chief Medical Officer has said, amid growing concern about the collateral damage.

Giving evidence at the Commons science and technology select committee, Prof Chris Whitty said the reproduction rate (R rate) was now below one, a critical milestone in suppressing the spread of the virus.

Social distancing had prevented people spreading coronavirus to such an extent that a single infected person would infect fewer than one other person, meaning the virus is dying away.

The news came as Government scientists suggested lockdown could be eased and replaced with aggressive contact tracing within weeks. Experts on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) think it is likely the number of new daily Covid-19 cases will be in the very low thousands by mid-may, enabling Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s 18,000 contact tracers to swing into action and allow an easing of restrictions.

Prof Whitty told MPS: “The R rate we have at the moment is somewhere between 0.5 and 1; let’s say for the sake of argument that it’s in the middle of that range, which I think is likely, that does give a little bit of scope for manoeuvre and taking some things off while still keeping it below one.” He added: “There are lots of ifs, buts and ands to that. On the one hand, I do not anticipate we will suddenly be able to lift everything, but nor do I think it likely we will have to be in exactly the current state for the indefinite future.”

Meanwhile, there was rising concern that lockdown measures are causing indirect fatalities as other health conditions are not being detected or treated early enough. Prof Whitty said scientists on Sage had no data on the collateral damage when they advised the Government in March, nor had they looked at the economic impact.

He said he was concerned that Accident and Emergency units had seen drops of 41 per cent in attendance.

Today, the head of the NHS was to launch a major new drive to persuade the public to seek the urgent care and treatment they need. Sir Simon Stevens warned that delays in getting treatment due to coronavirus fears posed a long-term risk to people’s health.

The plea came alongside findings that four in 10 people were too concerned about being a burden on the NHS to seek help from their GP. Some hospitals reported up to 42 per cent of their beds empty as patients avoided medical treatment. Cancer referrals to consultants had fallen by two thirds.

Research published yesterday in the BMJ by Prof John Appleby, chief economist at the Nuffield Trust, showed that in the week, ending April 20, 7,996 more people died than the equivalent five-year average for that week and 20 per cent of the extra deaths could not be attributed to coronavirus.

March figures showed a 29 per cent drop in the number of attendances at A&E and a 23 per cent drop in total emergency admissions in England, compared with 2019. “What we don’t know of course – at least not yet – is who has stayed away and what happened to them,” said Prof Appleby.

“But these are large falls, and the fear would be that some who didn’t attend emergency departments will have died, or may die in the coming months, when timely treatment may have prevented their death.”

Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, chairman of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge University, said: “It is not clear how many of these non-covid excess deaths are under-diagnosis and how much [are] collateral damage. But the apparent shift of non-covid deaths, from hospital to community, points to a substantial impact of the current lockdown on vulnerable people who do not have Covid.”

Analysis by Oxford University showed that between March 30 and April 5 in Scotland there were an extra 38 cancer deaths, 103 circulatory deaths and 83 extra dementia deaths.

Experts believe people may not be seeking treatment because they either fear contracting Covid-19 or do not want to burden the NHS.

On March 17, NHS trusts were asked to prepare to postpone all non-urgent elective operations from mid-april for at least three months to free up the maximum possible healthcare capacity.

Research by the health analysts Edge Health found the impact of the measures would increase the number of people waiting for treatment from 4.5million to a record high 6.8million.

To clear this number of backlog patients, the NHS would have to run at 125 per cent capacity for the whole of next year, the team calculated.

‘Some who didn’t attend [A&E] will have died, when timely treatment may have prevented their death’