Prediction of 100,000 cases per day was inaccurate, admits ‘Professor Lockdown’
PROF NEIL FERGUSON has admitted
his prediction of a sharp rise in coronavirus cases was inaccurate and any future lockdowns are now “unlikely”.
Referred to as “Professor Lockdown” after being among the first to advocate strict Covid restrictions, he told the BBC last month it was “almost inevitable” that daily infection rates would hit a record high of 100,000, and could peak at more than 200,000 after restrictions in England were relaxed on July 19.
After cases reached 54,674 on July 17, the number has since steadily decreased to around 31,000 daily infections, while the R value, the virus reproduction number, has fallen to between 0.8 and 1.1, from 1.1 and 1.4 last week.
Prof Ferguson told The Times he had not been “intending either to be the most gloomy, or the most optimistic”, and said that future lockdowns are now “unlikely” unless the virus changes “substantially”.
The Imperial College scientist said his forecast was based partly on the European Championships, which had distorted his modelling.
“We had an artificially inflated level of contact during that period and then suddenly it dropped off,” he said.
He said as social contacts increased, Britain could “reach another point where we start seeing increasing case numbers again”, though at least vaccines had “changed the relationship between cases and hospitalisation”.
Overall, he said the UK, like elsewhere, would likely have to accept the continuing presence of Covid-19, saying: “I suspect for several years, we will see additional mortality. There’s a risk in the winter coming of thousands to tens of thousands more deaths.”
Had Boris Johnson ordered the first lockdown a week earlier than in March last year, Britain’s first wave would have been reduced by half and “maybe … by three quarters”, saving 25,000 lives.
He said he understood the reluctance at that point, amid uncertain modelling, to shut down the economy. But he was less forgiving for the delay in locking down in the autumn.
The immunologist said “the idea that there was a trade-off between public health and the economy took hold in some elements of the political establishment”, but countries that had implemented measures earlier in the autumn had been able to lift them sooner.