MPS call on Whitty and Vallance to explain ‘4,000 deaths’ claims

SIR PATRICK VALLANCE and Prof Chris Whitty have been summoned before MPS to explain the evidence for a national lockdown, after scientists questioned their “4,000 deaths” figure.

The pair face the science and technology select committee this afternoon amid concern that graphs presented at a press conference on Saturday were out of date and alarmist.

Modelling presented by Sir Patrick, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, showed that in a worst-case scenario there could be 4,000 deaths a day by Dec 20 – four times more than the worst day of the spring peak.

But the forecast was compiled on Oct 9, before new tier restrictions came into effect. Oxford University researchers said if the modelling was correct, deaths would now be around 1,000 a day. Instead, the rolling seven-day average was 265. Monday’s death figure was 136. It has also emerged that the modelling was based on an R rate of 1.3 to 1.5 and presented to the country even though the Government believed the rate to now be between 1.1 and 1.3.

Yesterday the Government Office for Science refused to release the key to the graph showing which groups had modelled the varying scenarios or what the parameters had been, saying “relevant papers would be published shortly”.

Greg Clark, the committee chairman, said: “Parliament must have the chance to understand and question the evidence and rationale behind new restrictions in advance of Wednesday’s vote.”

Last week, Sir Patrick admitted tier restrictions were starting to have an impact, and the R rate was in decline. A graph shown at the press conference also showed a clear downward trend.

Prof Tim Spector, of King’s College London, said a national lockdown was being implemented just as the wave was “running out of steam in the worst affected areas”. He said data from the King’s app, which monitored the spread since the first wave, showed it stopped growing in the North four days ago.

Yesterday Prof Carl Heneghan, of Oxford University, published a graph showing cases in Liverpool had nearly halved since the peak on Oct 7. “Am I missing something?” he said, referring to the decision to lock down the country.

Prof Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M) that produced the 4,000-deaths graph, admitted it showed a situation where the tiers had little effect. He said the scenarios represented “preliminary work to generate a new reasonable worst-case planning scenario.” However, he said a second wave was still likely to exceed the first wave in hospital admissions and deaths.