One of Boris Johnson’s most senior backbenchers and a top government scientist today joined calls for a short circuit-breaker lockdown amid warnings of 690 daily coronavirus deaths within a fortnight.
The Prime Minister has hitherto resisted demands from Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and regional mayors to impose a nationwide lockdown and is pressing ahead with a targeted battle plan of local restrictions.
More than 28 million people are now living under tighter measures, with people in London among those plunged into Tier 2 last night, banning two households from meeting indoors.
But former health secretary Jeremy Hunt this morning ratcheted up pressure on the PM to go further and indicated his support for a circuit-breaker.
The Tory MP said: ‘I’ve always thought that it’s better to do things quickly and decisively than to wait until the virus has grown so I have a lot of sympathy with that.’
Government scientific adviser Sir John Bell rowed in behind Mr Hunt and said he sees ‘very little way of getting on top of this without some kind of a circuit-breaker because the numbers are actually pretty eye-watering’.
It came as scientists from the Medical Research Council biostatistics unit at Cambridge University presented Sage with the bleak forecast and estimated 47,000 people are becoming infected in England every day.
While stressing that the ‘substantial proportion’ of cases are asymptomatic, their modelling suggests that hundreds will be dying daily by the end of the month.
The report published this week says: ‘We predict that the number of deaths each day is likely to be between 240 and 690 on October 26.’
In other developments:
- Mr Johnson said the UK is developing the capacity to manufacture millions of fast turnaround tests for coronavirus which could deliver results in just 15 minutes;
- The National Education Union rowed in behind Sir Keir Starmer’s call for a national circuit-breaker to get infections down;
- The Welsh Government were to meet to discuss a circuit-breaker lockdown and will announce any decisions on Monday;
- Some 15,650 coronavirus cases were recorded in the UK on Friday, alongside 136 deaths;
- A senior scientist predicted Britain could be carrying out a million coronavirus tests a day by Christmas;
- The Prime Minister’s attention briefly switched from the pandemic to warn a No Deal Brexit was likely as both London and Brussels ramped up their tough talk.
The R rate remains stable for the UK as a whole but it has dropped for the second week in a row in England, falling from a possible range of 1.3 to 1.6 on October 2 to 1.2 to 1.4 today. But SAGE warned today it is ‘confident transmission is not slowing’ and that cases will continue to grow exponentially for as long as R remains above one
Yesterday the Government announced 15,650 new lab-confirmed coronavirus cases, although the true figure is estimated to be much higher.
The Cambridge scientists point to Covid-19 hotspots such as the North West and North East, where infections are reckoned to be at 17,600 and 10,000 respectively, followed by London and the Midlands at 5,450 and 5,720.
London, Essex, York, Elmbridge, Barrow-in-Furness, North East Derbyshire, Erewash and Chesterfield were last night plunged into Tier 2, banning different households from meeting indoors.
Lancashire also joined Liverpool in the most severe Tier 3, where all pubs are forced to close unless they can serve food.
Yet Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is resisting moves from Government to elevate his region into the very high alert level and is also agitating for a circuit breaker.
The PM warned Mr Burnham he will impose Tier 3 restrictions on the Manchester region unilaterally, with sources suggesting as early as Monday.
Speaking from Number 10, he said: ‘I cannot stress enough: time is of the essence. Each day that passes before action is taken means more people will go to hospital, more people will end up in intensive care and tragically more people will die.’
Mr Burnham and council leaders across Greater Manchester responded by insisting they have done ‘everything within our power to protect the health of our residents’, and said people and firms need greater financial support before accepting the lockdown.
They also suggested in a joint statement that Downing Street had delayed discussions, adding: ‘We can assure the Prime Minister that we are ready to meet at any time to try to agree a way forward.’
Mr Hunt this morning urged both sides to stop the public war of words and thrash out an agreement in private.
He told BBC Radio 4: ‘I think more important right now is we stop this public war of words between local leaders and national leaders because in a pandemic the most important thing is a consistent message because you really have to have compliance with the very, very important public health messages about social distancing.
His comments came as Sir John, regius professor of medicine at Oxford, threw his weight behind a two-week circuit-breaker to get a grip on the rising infection rate.
Sir John told BBC Radio 4: ‘I can see very little way of getting on top of this without some kind of a circuit-breaker because the numbers are actually pretty eye-watering in some bits of the country and I think it’s going to be very hard to get on top of this just biting around the edges.
‘I think there will be every effort to keep schools open. If in the end we have to take kids out for two weeks, calm it all down, and then start ideally embedded in a much more rigorous testing regime then that’s maybe what we may have to do.’
Sir Patrick Vallance yesterday offered a glimmer of hope and said the UK’s coronavirus outbreak is not spiralling as fast as it did in the spring because social distancing and lockdown measures are working to keep cases on a leash.
But the Government’s chief scientific adviser warned that the epidemic is ‘growing everywhere’ and that more action must be taken to bring down the R rate, which is somewhere between 1.3 and 1.5 for the UK meaning cases will continue to surge exponentially.
An official report from SAGE revealed that the R rate in England has actually dropped for two weeks in a row already, falling from an estimated range of 1.2 to 1.6 on October 2 to 1.2 to 1.4 today. But the group cautioned there is no proof the outbreak is slowing and said: ‘SAGE is almost certain that the epidemic continues to grow exponentially across the country, and is confident that the transmission is not slowing.’
A raft of statistics published show cases are still surging in England by as many as 28,000 new infections per day, according to ONS estimates for the first week of October, and Sir Patrick put the figure at more like 40,000 a day – or more – by more up-to-date estimates.
Although the numbers are still rising dramatically and are higher than anything since March and April, they still pale in comparison to the first wave when at least 100,000 people were known to be catching Covid-19 each day.
Separate data shows almost a third of England’s councils saw a drop in coronavirus infections last week, amid calls for a second circuit-breaker lockdown and tightening restrictions across the country. In contrast, only two saw a dip the week before.
Speaking in the press conference Sir Patrick said that although the Covid-19 outbreak in the UK is growing quickly it’s not as bad as it was during the first wave in the spring.
‘What you can see is that the R hasn’t gone back to where it was and where it would be in an unmitigated epidemic of this disease which would be at about three,’ he explained.
‘So it has gone up, the epidemic is growing, probably between four per cent and seven per cent per day, but that R hasn’t gone right back up and the reason it hasn’t is because of the measures everyone is already taking.’
The report from SAGE showed that the UK’s rate has shifted upwards slightly with the lower bound of the estimate increasing from 1.2 to 1.3, but the upper limit has not changed in a week.
England’s R rate was estimated to be between 1.3 and 1.6 on October 2 but the range has since dropped to 1.2 to 1.4.
In the past week the projected rate fell in London and the North East and Yorkshire, rose in the East, South East and North West, and was unchanged in the South West and Midlands.
But SAGE warned R rates do not need to increase for the outbreak to get worse, and any figure above one means the virus is spreading quickly.
‘SAGE is almost certain that the epidemic continues to grow exponentially across the country, and is confident that the transmission is not slowing,’ the group warned.
‘There is no clear evidence that the epidemic’s trajectory has changed in the past month.
‘While the R value remains above 1.0, infections will continue to grow at an exponential rate. This is currently the case for every region of England and all have positive growth rates, reflecting increases in the number of new infections across the country.’
The chief scientific officer pointed out there are various estimates of the number of new infections emerging each day in the UK, ranging from around 23,000, suggested by the ONS, to as high as 74,000.
The 74,000 cases per day projection had been made by researchers on SPI-M, a sub-group of SAGE. Sir Patrick said it was likely the ‘upper end’ of the estimates.
Test positivity data from Public Health England shows that the proportion of tests taken that have positive results has soared in September and early October, so that 7.1 per cent of all tests taken are now positive – one in every 14 swabs
The proportions of people testing positive for coronavirus is now up in all regions of England but the data shows what Open University statistician Professor Kevin McConway described as a ‘spark of light amongst the gloom’ in a hint that the increase may be slowing in the North East and Yorkshire & The Humber. It is too soon, however, to say whether it is a real trend or a quirk in the statistics
The ONS estimates that around 0.62 per cent of the population of England was infected with coronavirus during the week from October 2 to October 8.
This is the highest estimate it has produced since data began in late April and a marked surge from 0.41 per cent a week earlier (ending October 1).
‘In recent weeks there has been clear evidence of an increase in the number of people testing positive for Covid-19,’ the report said. It added that the rates were currently highest in older teenagers and young adults.
‘Smaller increases are also apparent across all of the other age groups, apart from individuals aged 70 and over,’ the ONS said.
‘There is clear evidence of variation in Covid-19 infection rates across the regions of England, with highest rates seen in the North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, and the North East, which have all seen steep increases in recent weeks.’
The random testing programme’s results were this week based on results from 211,851 swab tests. A total of 1,062 tests were positive from 926 people living in 723 households.
Using this data and applying it statistically to the entire population – taking into account where the people who tested positive were living and how old they were, for example – the researchers can estimate the true size of the outbreak in England.
The official Department of Health testing programme does not pick up all infections because a majority of people have no symptoms when they’re infected with Covid-19.
In the week up to October 8, to match the ONS study’s time period, an average 12,781 people were diagnosed each day in England, suggesting fewer than half of people (46 per cent) who catch the virus actually get tested and have a positive result.
The ONS results are ‘gloomy’ once again, said one scientist, but pointed out there were tentative signs that increases in infections were starting to slow in the North East and Yorkshire and the Humber.
‘The very broad message is much the same gloomy one as in last week’s ONS bulletin,’ said Professor Kevin McConway, a professor of statistics at the Open University.
‘The estimate of the number of people in the whole English community population that would test positive for the virus has continued to increase, with no clear sign that the rate of increase is slowing.
‘The same is true for the estimate of the daily number of new infections.’
He added: ‘What’s new is that, in two of these regions [North East and Yorkshire & The Humber] there are signs that the increases are levelling off.
‘ONS, rightly in my view, urge caution about interpreting these signs – there’s quite a lot of statistical uncertainty in the numbers, and a levelling off over just one week might not indicate a more permanent slowing, let alone a clear downturn.
‘But at least it’s a spark of light amongst the gloom. In the North West there’s not yet any sign of such a slowing. Indeed, in the regions in the Midlands and South that’s also the case, though the infection rates there remain quite a lot smaller than in the three Northern regions.’
The King’s College London’s Covid Symptom Study has made similar findings to the ONS report.
Based on 13,361 swab tests done between 27 September and 11 October, the team said there were 27,762 people catching symptomatic coronavirus every day during that time across the whole UK. 21,642 of these daily infections were in England.
They do not include people who don’t get any symptoms, nor hospital or care home patients.
The figures are up from last week but show a smaller rise than what was seen in September, increasing by 27 per cent in a week (UK) compared to a 114 per cent rise between September 17 and 24 but faster than the 11 per cent the week before last.
Professor Tim Spector, the epidemiologist in charge of the project, confirmed that his project suggests the rate of increase had slowed.
He said: ‘The data is no longer showing the exponential increases that we were seeing a couple of weeks ago, but is clearly showing new cases continuing to rise.
‘The North West still has the most cases and the fastest acceleration of cases with doubling times of around 10 days. Slowing this rapid rise is a priority.
‘Scotland, Wales, London and the Midlands are slowly increasing with a doubling time of 14 to 28 days and the South and East of England remaining relatively flat with five-fold fewer cases than the worst hit regions.
‘Our data is roughly seven to 10 days ahead of other sources meaning that it acts like an early warning system, whilst we wait for the data from the confirmed cases.’
The weekly estimates of true cases provide the clearest indication of what Britain’s coronavirus situation really is.
Department of Health data shows wide variation in infection rates across the city of London which has led to MPs complaining it is unfair to tar the whole city with the same brush
Coronavirus positive tests in London have increased dramatically since the beginning of September but changes in recent weeks suggest the rate of rise is slowing down, with a 37 per cent increase in the seven days to October 7, compared to the almost double 84 per cent in the third week of September
Hospital admissions in London increased 51 per cent in the fortnight between September 25 and October 9 – from an average 33 per day to 50 – which was half the rate of increase of the national measure for England
Deaths in London remain low at an average of four per day, compared to 60 daily across England as a whole. The measures, however, is always the last to rise and lags around a month behind infections
There are currently 77 patients on ventilators in intensive care in London, up from a low of 10 on August 7. For comparison, there are 135 ventilated patients in the North West, 116 in the North East and 468 across England as a whole
Daily cases are useful but only reveal numbers of people who are getting symptoms of Covid-19. Scientists know that a majority of people who get the illness don’t get noticeably ill with it and many don’t even notice.
Hospitalisations and death counts are the more worrying indicators but these lag weeks or even months behind fast-rising outbreaks, meaning they do not change fast enough to be a basis for action.
By the time deaths get to noticeably higher levels it is generally considered too late to act.
Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, explained this week that case rises now are ‘baking in’ hospital admissions and deaths that will inevitably come in the following weeks as a consequence of infections that have already happened. How many will result remains to be seen.
Government advisers on SAGE were less optimistic about the data and said in their R rate projection today: ‘SAGE is almost certain that the epidemic continues to grow exponentially across the country, and is confident that the transmission is not slowing.
‘There is no clear evidence that the epidemic’s trajectory has changed in the past month.
‘While the R value remains above 1.0, infections will continue to grow at an exponential rate.
‘This is currently the case for every region of England and all have positive growth rates, reflecting increases in the number of new infections across the country.’
It comes as some researchers have predicted England may start to record more than 500 daily Covid-19 deaths before the end of the month.
Cambridge University academics, whose estimates feed into No 10’s advisory panel SAGE, believe 47,000 people were getting infected every day in their most recent projection on October 9.
They believe cases are doubling in under seven days, with a ‘substantial proportion’ of those being asymptomatic.
Despite figures showing cases are still much lower than they were at the time of the peak of the spring pandemic, the academics have projected 500 people could die each day by October 29.
This is darker than the bold claims of Number 10’s top two advisers, who warned the figure could reach 200 by the end of the month.
Data from Public Health England (PHE) and NHS England on Covid-19 confirmed deaths and antibody prevalence is used, alongside information from Google and the ONS on mixing between different age groups, to predict the figures.
Boris Johnson (pictured left in No10 today) is preparing to put Greater Manchester on the Government’s Tier Three list with or without Andy Burnham’s go-ahead
DEATHS ‘COULD HIT 500 PER DAY BY NOVEMBER’
Some researchers predict England may start to record more than 500 daily Covid-19 deaths before the end of the month.
Cambridge University academics, whose estimates feed into No 10’s advisory panel SAGE, believe 47,000 people were getting infected every day in their most recent projection on October 9.
They believe cases are doubling in under seven days, with a ‘substantial proportion’ of those being asymptomatic.
Estimates from Cambridge University and PHE researchers project that the current trajectory of England’s outbreak could lead to 500 deaths per day by November. But the Government is already in the process of locking down the country to avoid this
Despite figures showing cases are still much lower than they were at the time of the peak of the spring pandemic, the academics have projected 500 people could die each day by October 29.
This is darker than the bold claims of Number 10’s top two advisers, who warned the figure could reach 200 by the end of the month.
It comes as Boris Johnson today demanded Greater Manchester leaders focus on ‘saving lives’ as he hailed an agreement with Lancashire to move into the toughest lockdown level.
The PM – who will address the country again at a 4pm press conference – sent a stark message to mayor Andy Burnham and Tory ‘Red Wall’ MPs after a deal was announced to extend Tier Three curbs.
Lancashire joins Liverpool as the only areas in the top bracket, which means all bars and pubs that do not serve meals must shut – as well as a ban on household mixing indoors and in gardens. Thousands of venues are expected to be closed from midnight tonight, with casinos, betting shops and car boot sales given another 48 hours’ grace.
However, there was anger in Liverpool that it has been made to close down gyms and leisure centres, while they can stay open in Lancashire.
The Department of Health said there would be a £12million support package in Lancashire as well as more money for an economic recovery ‘task force’ over the next six months. Local sources claimed in total it could be worth £30million.
But the standoff over Greater Manchester looks to be deepening, with the government warning it will not be ‘held over a barrel’ by Mr Burnham.
Mr Burnham reiterated his demand for more financial support today, after saying the North was being treated like a ‘sacrificial lamb’ and a ‘canary in the coalmine’ with experimental restrictions. He has claimed that if London – which enters Tier Two from tomorrow – was in the same position there would be a nationwide clampdown.
But speaking to reporters this afternoon, Mr Johnson warned that efforts to extract the maximum money from government will not work.
‘This is about saving lives,’ he said. ‘This is about us joining together locally and nationally to get the R down, to make these regional restrictions, this tiering system, work and to save lives.
‘Everybody in Greater Manchester and all the areas that are still finding it difficult should think about it.’
He added: ‘I’d much rather not impose things, I’d much rather that we were able to work out something together with local authorities, with the mayor in Manchester.
‘But it is up to local leaders to show the kind of leadership that we have seen in Liverpool, in Lancashire and in London.’
Mr Johnson is also facing mounting pressure from his own SAGE experts to trigger a ‘circuit breaker’ squeeze across the country over half-term – with one scientist even suggesting the process might need to be repeated again and again until a vaccine becomes available.