Death projections ‘underestimated’
Death projections which led to the stringent lockdown measures in March were an “underestimate”, an expert has said.
Professor Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College London - whose modelling led to the original nationwide lockdown - said that earlier estimates did not take into account the deaths that could have occurred if the health system had collapsed under the strain of Covid patients.
He was one of the lead authors of a paper which predicted that half a million people could die in the UK if the Government took no action to stop the spread of Covid-19.
Meanwhile, speaking on Radio 4’s The Life Scientific, Prof Ferguson said that his own breach of coronvirus social distancing rules was a “stupid” thing to do.
In May, Prof Ferguson quit as a Government adviser on corona virus andre signed from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) after allowing a woman to visit him at his London home during lockdown.
When asked about the paper which said that the UK could expect 510,000 deaths if nothing was done to mitigate the spread of this disease, he said: “I completely stand by [it]. If anything, it might have been an underestimate because we didn’t take account of the fact of what actually happened to mortality rates if the health system collapsed, the mortality rates could have been even higher.”
Going forward he said some “difficult decisions” would need to be made. “We’re not in the same position we were in March, we have much better surveillance in place,” he said.