UK’s coronavirus outbreak is ‘starting to slow’ but deaths will keep rising, says government expert Neil Ferguson as he suggests up to 2million people might already have been infected
- Professor Neil Ferguson says signs coronavirus outbreak ‘starting to slow’ in UK
- Government expert says rate of increase in hospital admission looks to be easing
- Warned deaths will keep rising as he suggested up to 2million might be infected
- Coronavirus symptoms: what are they and should you see a doctor?
The UK’s coronavirus outbreak looks to be slowing down, one of the government’s top experts said today.
Professor Neil Ferguson said he had detected ‘early signs’ that the spread was being curbed by lockdown, with the rate of increase in hospital admissions easing.
But he warned that deaths are still likely to rise sharply as they lag two or three weeks behind the new infections. He also suggested that up to three per cent of the UK – around two million people – might already have been infected, and possibly as high as five per cent in London.
The slight glimmer of optimism emerged after Boris Johnson delivered a rallying cry for Britain to work together, thanking everyone who was contributing in a video from his quarantine bunker in Downing Street.
But deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries has warned that Britons should not expect a return to ‘normal life’ for six months, and possibly longer.
On another rollercoaster day in the coronavirus crisis:
- Mr Johnson has contradicted Tory predecessor Margaret Thatcher by saying there ‘is such a thing as society’ as he hailed 20,000 retired medics returning to the NHS;
- F1 teams have produced a breathing device that could stop coronavirus patients having to go into intensive care, and should be in hospitals within days;
- Health minister Helen Whately has admitted that while the government now has the ‘capacity’ to carry out 10,000 coronavirus tests a day it might not have done so yet;
- Police armed with new powers to enforce the lockdown are continuing to shame suspected wrongdoers – including the MP son of former Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock;
- Economists have warned the crisis could cause UK GDP to plunge by 15 per cent and unemployment to double;
Professor Neil Ferguson said he had detected ‘early signs’ that the spread was being curbed by lockdown, with the rate of increase in hospital admissions easing
Leading epidemiologist Prof Ferguson warned deaths are still likely to rise sharply as they lag two or three weeks behind the new infections
WHO IS PROFESSOR MICHAEL LEVITT?
Professor Michael Levitt and two fellow academics won the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their pioneering work on using computers to understand complex chemical processes.
But he is a biophysicist at Stanford University and not an epidemiologist – a branch of science that studies the spread of diseases, such as COVID-19.
But Professor Levitt, who has monitored the coronavirus outbreak in his own time, told an Israeli publication earlier this month: ‘I can analyse numbers.’
He predicted that China would record around 80,000 cases and 3,250 deaths, after watching the outbreak slow down in mid-February.
China has so far recorded around 81,000 cases and 3,300 deaths – despite the infection toll jumping by around 30 per cent each day at the beginning of the outbreak.
He argued exponential growth models were wrong because they assume ‘you keep meeting new people’.
Professor Levitt added: ‘If you consider your own social circle, you basically meet the same people every day.
‘You can meet new people on public transportation but even on the bus, after sometime most passengers will either be infected or immune.’
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times hoping to alleviate the fears of millions, the 72-year-old said: ‘We’re going to be fine.’
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, leading epidemiologist Prof Ferguson said: ‘We think the epidemic is just about starting to slow in the UK right now… it is the result of the actions people have taken and governments have taken.’
He said the number of deaths was a reliable indicator of an outbreak, but gave you the picture from two to three weeks ago.
‘In the UK we can see some early signs of slowing in some indicators – less in deaths as deaths do lag by a long time…
‘But if you look as the number of new hospital admissions per day for instance, that does seem to be slowing down a little bit now.’
Prof Ferguson stressed the rates of hospital admissions had ‘not yet plateaued’ but the rate of increase looked to be slowing.
He also said the epidemic was spreading at different rates in different parts of the country.
‘It is quite clear across the country, the epidemic is in different stages in different parts of the country,’ he said.
‘In central London it could be as many as 3 per cent to 5 per cent of the population has been infected – maybe more in individual hot spots. In the country as a whole in the UK, maybe 2 per cent or 3 per cent.’
He said antibody tests, currently in final stages of validation, would be ‘critical’ to the understanding of the epidemic, adding they would ‘hopefully’ be available in days.
Dr Harries told a Downing Street press conference last night that people should not be viewing the coronavirus crisis as something that will blow over soon.
She said it will not be clear whether the ‘social distancing’ lockdown is working for another two or three weeks – after Easter – with deaths set to rise further.
But even if the draconian restrictions do succeed in ‘squashing’ the peak of the outbreak, reverting to a ‘normal way of life’ immediately would probably lead to a disastrous new spike in infections.
Some 20,000 former NHS staff have returned to help in the fight against coronavirus, Boris Johnson announced in a video message