BORIS Johnson is to make a statement to the House of Commons today to outline new lockdown restrictions in England to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
His update comes as one of his advisers warned that more than 200 people across the UK could die every day from Covid-19 by mid-November if the current rate of infection is not halted.
Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK Government’s chief scientific adviser, said the “vast majority of the population remain susceptible” to catching coronavirus and the situation required swift action to bring the case numbers down.
He added that if the existing infection rates continue, the UK could see around 50,000 cases a day by the middle of October.
It comes as ministers across the UK make final decisions on the national measures needed to tackle rising cases, with Health Secretary Matt Hancock strongly hinting that separate households in England could be prevented from mixing.
In the first televised address in Downing Street that was not attended by politicians, appearing alongside England’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty, Vallance said there was “no doubt” the UK was seeing increasing cases of Covid-19 among all age groups.
He said it was “not a prediction”, but the current doubling of cases every seven days could lead to a dramatic rise in hospitalisations and deaths. In mid-September, around 3000 new cases were recorded every day in the UK, he said.
“If – and that’s quite a big if – but if that continues unabated and this grows, doubling every seven days, then what you see, of course, let’s say there were 5000 today, it would be 10,000 next week, 20,000 the week after, 40,000 the week after, and you can see that by mid-October, if that continued, you would end up with something like 50,000 cases in the middle of October, per day.”
He said the “50,000 cases per day would be expected to lead a month later, so the middle of November, say, to 200-plus deaths per day”.
“The challenge therefore is to make sure the doubling time does not stay at seven days.”
Vallance said it was not the case that the rise in coronavirus in the UK was down to more testing being carried out.
“Could that increase be due to increased testing? The answer is no.
“We see an increase in positivity of the tests done – so we see the proportion of people testing positive has increased, even if testing stays flat.”
Whitty hinted curbs to social lives were needed to prevent coronavirus spiralling out of control, saying there was a need to “break unnecessary links” between households and a need to “change course”.
He said there were four things to do – washing hands and using masks, quarantine measures, and investing in vaccines and drugs.
“In many ways the most difficult [one], is that we have to break unnecessary links between households because that is the way in which this virus is transmitted,” he said.
“And this means reducing social contacts, whether they are at work – and this is where we have enormous gratitude to all the businesses, for example, who have worked so hard to make their environments Covid-secure to reduce the risk – and also in social environments ...
“This is a balance of risk between if we don’t do enough the virus will take off – and at the moment that is the path we’re clearly on – and if we do not change course we are going to find ourselves in a very difficult problem.”
Whitty warned the country should be braced for a tough winter, adding that colder months were known to benefit respiratory viruses.
Mortality rates from Covid-19 were “significantly greater” than seasonal flu, which killed around 7000 annually or 20,000 in a bad year, he added.
He suggested that science would eventually “ride to our rescue” but “in this period of the next six months, I think we have to realise that we have to take this collectively, very seriously”.
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said yesterday that final decisions on actions were still being made.
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